The next night was quite different. They came at sundown to a settlement. The houses were brown and homelike. In two of them the sticks of pine used instead of candles were already burning. They shone through the windows with a warm golden light that seemed to say, “Welcome, Sarah Noble!”
Sarah, riding on Thomas, looked down at her father, walking beside her. It had been a long day, and the trail through the forest had not been easy.
“We will spend the night here, Father?”
“Yes,” said her father. “And you will sleep safely in a warm house.”
Sarah sighed with pleasure. “Lift me down and let me walk, Father? Poor Thomas carries so much he should not carry me too far.”
So they were walking, all three of them, when they came to the cabin where the candle wood was lighted early.
They knocked. The latch was lifted and a woman stood in the doorway looking at them.
She is not like my mother, Sarah thought. Her face is not like a mother’s face.
Still the woman stood and looked at them.
“Good evening,” Sarah’s father said. “I am John Noble from the Massachusetts colony, and this is my daughter, Sarah. We are on our way to New Milford where I have bought land to build a house. Can you tell us where we could put up for the night?”
The woman looked at them, still without smiling.
“We have not much room,” she said, “but you may share what we have. My husband, Andrew Robinson, is away . . . and I had thought it might be wandering Indians. If you do not mind sleeping by the fire . . .”
“We slept in the forest last night,” John Noble said. “Anything under a roof will seem fine to us.”
So they went in, and Sarah saw the children who were in the house. There were four of them, two boys and two girls, all staring at Sarah with big round eyes. She began to feel shy. And now she was alone, for her father had gone to see to Thomas, and to bring in Sarah’s quilt for her to sleep on.
“Be seated,” said Mistress Robinson. “You are welcome to share what we have. Lemuel, Abigail, Robert, Mary, this is Sarah Noble.”
Sarah smiled timidly at the children.
“Take off your cloak, Sarah.”
But Sarah held it closely. “If you do not mind,” she said, “I will keep it—I am—I am a little cold.”
The children laughed. Sarah sat down at the table, and in a few minutes her father was with them. Now Sarah let the cloak fall back from her shoulders.
“I will hang it up for you,” said Abigail. “It is a beautiful warm cloak.” Her fingers stroked the cloak lovingly as she hung it on a peg.
“And it is a kind of red,” she said. “I would like to have a new cloak.”
“You have no need of a new cloak,” said her mother, sharply.
Now Mistress Robinson began to ask questions. And as John Noble answered, she began clucking and fussing just as Sarah’s mother might have done. But somehow Sarah’s mother fussed in a loving way.