"Pray let me have it now," said I; "it shall be woven into the ballad."
"She is neither more nor less," answered Zenobia, "than a seamstress
from the city; and she has probably no more transcendental purpose than
to do my miscellaneous sewing, for I suppose she will hardly expect to
make my dresses."
"How can you decide upon her so easily?" I inquired.
"Oh, we women judge one another by tokens that escape the obtuseness of
masculine perceptions!" said Zenobia. "There is no proof which you
would be likely to appreciate, except the needle marks on the tip of
her forefinger. Then, my supposition perfectly accounts for her
paleness, her nervousness, and her wretched fragility. Poor thing! She
has been stifled with the heat of a salamander stove, in a small, close
room, and has drunk coffee, and fed upon doughnuts, raisins, candy, and
all such trash, till she is scarcely half alive; and so, as she has
hardly any physique, a poet like Mr. Miles Coverdale may be allowed to
think her spiritual."
"Look at her now!" whispered I.
Priscilla was gazing towards us with an inexpressible sorrow in her wan
face and great tears running down her cheeks. It was difficult to
resist the impression that, cautiously as we had lowered our voices,
she must have overheard and been wounded by Zenobia's scornful estimate
of her character and purposes.
"What ears the girl must have!" whispered Zenobia, with a look of
vexation, partly comic and partly real. "I will confess to you that I
cannot quite make her out. However, I am positively not an ill-natured
person, unless when very grievously provoked,--and as you, and
especially Mr. Hollingsworth, take so much interest in this odd
creature, and as she knocks with a very slight tap against my own heart
likewise,--why, I mean to let her in. From this moment I will be
reasonably kind to her. There is no pleasure in tormenting a person of
one's own sex, even if she do favor one with a little more love than
one can conveniently dispose of; and that, let me say, Mr. Coverdale,
is the most troublesome offence you can offer to a woman."
"Thank you," said I, smiling; "I don't mean to be guilty of it."
She went towards Priscilla, took her hand, and passed her own rosy
finger-tips, with a pretty, caressing movement, over the girl's hair.
The touch had a magical effect. So vivid a look of joy flushed up
beneath those fingers, that it seemed as if the sad and wan Priscilla
had been snatched away, and another kind of creature substituted in her
place. This one caress, bestowed voluntarily by Zenobia, was evidently
received as a pledge of all that the stranger sought from her, whatever
the unuttered boon might be. From that instant, too, she melted in
quietly amongst us, and was no longer a foreign element. Though always
an object of peculiar interest, a riddle, and a theme of frequent
discussion, her tenure at Blithedale was thenceforth fixed. We no more
thought of questioning it, than if Priscilla had been recognized as a
domestic sprite, who had haunted the rustic fireside of old, before we
had ever been warmed by its blaze.