We heard the tap of his hammer at
intervals for the rest of the evening. The remainder of the party
adjourned to the sitting-room. Good Mrs. Foster took her
knitting-work, and soon fell fast asleep, still keeping her needles
in brisk movement, and, to the best of my observation, absolutely
footing a stocking out of the texture of a dream. And a very
substantial stocking it seemed to be. One of the two handmaidens
hemmed a towel, and the other appeared to be making a ruffle, for her
Sunday's wear, out of a little bit of embroidered muslin which
Zenobia had probably given her.
It was curious to observe how trustingly, and yet how timidly, our
poor Priscilla betook herself into the shadow of Zenobia's protection.
She sat beside her on a stool, looking up every now and then with
an expression of humble delight at her new friend's beauty. A
brilliant woman is often an object of the devoted admiration--it
might almost be termed worship, or idolatry--of some young girl, who
perhaps beholds the cynosure only at an awful distance, and has as
little hope of personal intercourse as of climbing among the stars of
heaven. We men are too gross to comprehend it. Even a woman, of
mature age, despises or laughs at such a passion. There occurred to
me no mode of accounting for Priscilla's behavior, except by
supposing that she had read some of Zenobia's stories (as such
literature goes everywhere), or her tracts in defence of the sex, and
had come hither with the one purpose of being her slave.
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