But, though she appeared to like me tolerably
well, I could never flatter myself with being distinguished by her as
Hollingsworth and Zenobia were.
One forenoon, during my convalescence, there came a gentle tap at my
chamber door. I immediately said, "Come in, Priscilla!" with an
acute sense of the applicant's identity. Nor was I deceived. It was
really Priscilla,--a pale, large-eyed little woman (for she had gone
far enough into her teens to be, at least, on the outer limit of
girlhood), but much less wan than at my previous view of her, and far
better conditioned both as to health and spirits. As I first saw her,
she had reminded me of plants that one sometimes observes doing
their best to vegetate among the bricks of an enclosed court, where
there is scanty soil and never any sunshine. At present, though with
no approach to bloom, there were indications that the girl had human
blood in her veins.
Priscilla came softly to my bedside, and held out an article of
snow-white linen, very carefully and smoothly ironed. She did not
seem bashful, nor anywise embarrassed. My weakly condition, I
suppose, supplied a medium in which she could approach me.
"Do not you need this?" asked she. "I have made it for you." It was
a nightcap!
"My dear Priscilla," said I, smiling, "I never had on a nightcap in
my life! But perhaps it will be better for me to wear one, now that
I am a miserable invalid. How admirably you have done it! No, no; I
never can think of wearing such an exquisitely wrought nightcap as
this, unless it be in the daytime, when I sit up to receive company.
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