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She had a sensible, downright sort of face, and she took life with a gravity which would have oppressed a less earnest spirit than Priscilla's. "Well, I'm tired," she said, when the meal was over. "I suppose I've done a great deal more than I thought I had all day. I think I'll go to bed early. We have said all our last words, haven't we, Priscilla?" "Pretty nearly, Aunt Raby."
A rush of troubled tenderness flooded Aunt Priscilla's heart. "God help me!" she breathed half aloud. "I never wished her harm like this; I'll speak to her; I'll call to her. Perhaps she's something to say, and can't rest till she's said it. Oh! my poor, poor girl!" Trembling all over, she unlatched her casement and swung it back on its rusty hinges, which creaked loudly in the utter stillness.
He had found himself quite unable in his anger to clothe his hard sayings in forms of speech that would have hidden their brutal force, and he had turned his back at last on her answering bitterness and fled to Baker's, thankful to find when he got there that Priscilla's beauty and the interest of the mystery that hung about her wiped out every other remembrance.
Things were getting too tense, and Travers yielded to a nervous impulse to laugh again. This brought a frown to Priscilla's brow. "Forgive me!" he pleaded. "And now see here, little pagan, let us make a compact. Let us keep our ideals; don't let anything take them from us. Is it a go?" He stretched his hand out, and the small, brown one lay frankly in it.
And oh, Georgie, you're an obliging dear; just run down-stairs to the store and get some sugar. I think I saw some money in that silver inkstand on Priscilla's desk." "We've got some sugar," objected Priscilla. "I bought a whole pound yesterday." "No, my lamb; we haven't got it any more. I lent it to Bonnie Connaught last night. Just hunt around for the spoons," she added.
Tattine was right about that, but just as she swung the gate open, a happy thought struck those four little puppies' minds, and as she started to run back to the house, all four of them buried their sharp little teeth in the frill of Priscilla's wrapper.
And, out of the loneliness of her sad little existence, Priscilla's love grew, and tended upward, and twined itself perseveringly around this unseen sister; as a grapevine might strive to clamber out of a gloomy hollow among the rocks, and embrace a young tree standing in the sunny warmth above.
This had been one of the decisions haunting Aunt Priscilla's conscience. Down at the bottom she had a strict sense of justice. "It is hardly nice to go there any more," said Aunt Elizabeth. "And I shall not enjoy a young girl like Betty running over there, if Aunt Priscilla shouldn't be very well, and she is breaking. Polly gets worse and really is not to be trusted."
But the mere thought of such joy was too much for the self-control the poor mother so struggled for, and when the elder hastened into the house he found his wife weeping for joy upon Priscilla's heaving breast. "Nay then, wife, nay then, doest thou well? and yet mine own eyes might but too easily rain with gratitude. Dame, wife I say, nay then let us pray that in all things His will be done."
Having fasted, she ate at lunch in her dressing-room, with some taste of the food, haunted by an accusation of gluttony because of her eating at all, and a vile confession, that she was enabled to eat, owing to the receipt of Priscilla's empty letter: for her soul's desire was to be doing a deed of expiation, and the macerated flesh seemed her assurance to herself of the courage to make amends.
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