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.
She now produced, out of a work-bag that she had with her, some
little wooden instruments (what they are called I never knew), and
proceeded to knit, or net, an article which ultimately took the shape
of a silk purse. As the work went on, I remembered to have seen just
such purses before; indeed, I was the possessor of one. Their
peculiar excellence, besides the great delicacy and beauty of the
manufacture, lay in the almost impossibility that any uninitiated
person should discover the aperture; although, to a practised touch,
they would open as wide as charity or prodigality might wish.
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