There was no other
sort of efficiency about her. Yet everybody was kind to Priscilla;
everybody loved her and laughed at her to her face, and did not laugh
behind her back; everybody would have given her half of his last
crust, or the bigger share of his plum-cake. These were pretty
certain indications that we were all conscious of a pleasant weakness
in the girl, and considered her not quite able to look after her own
interests or fight her battle with the world. And
Hollingsworth--perhaps because he had been the means of introducing
Priscilla to her new abode--appeared to recognize her as his own
especial charge.
Her simple, careless, childish flow of spirits often made me sad.
She seemed to me like a butterfly at play in a flickering bit of
sunshine, and mistaking it for a broad and eternal summer. We
sometimes hold mirth to a stricter accountability than sorrow; it
must show good cause, or the echo of its laughter comes back drearily.
Priscilla's gayety, moreover, was of a nature that showed me how
delicate an instrument she was, and what fragile harp-strings were
her nerves. As they made sweet music at the airiest touch, it would
require but a stronger one to burst them all asunder. Absurd as it
might be, I tried to reason with her, and persuade her not to be so
joyous, thinking that, if she would draw less lavishly upon her fund
of happiness, it would last the longer. I remember doing so, one
summer evening, when we tired laborers sat looking on, like
Goldsmith's old folks under the village thorn-tree, while the young
people were at their sports.
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