As the child grew up, so pallid and so slender, and with much
unaccountable nervousness, and all the weaknesses of neglected
infancy still haunting her, the gross and simple neighbors whispered
strange things about Priscilla. The big, red, Irish matrons, whose
innumerable progeny swarmed out of the adjacent doors, used to mock
at the pale Western child. They fancied--or, at least, affirmed it,
between jest and earnest--that she was not so solid flesh and blood
as other children, but mixed largely with a thinner element. They
called her ghost-child, and said that she could indeed vanish when
she pleased, but could never, in her densest moments, make herself
quite visible. The sun at midday would shine through her; in the
first gray of the twilight, she lost all the distinctness of her
outline; and, if you followed the dim thing into a dark corner,
behold! she was not there. And it was true that Priscilla had
strange ways; strange ways, and stranger words, when she uttered any
words at all. Never stirring out of the old governor's dusky house,
she sometimes talked of distant places and splendid rooms, as if she
had just left them. Hidden things were visible to her (at least so
the people inferred from obscure hints escaping unawares out of her
mouth), and silence was audible. And in all the world there was
nothing so difficult to be endured, by those who had any dark secret
to conceal, as the glance of Priscilla's timid and melancholy eyes.
Her peculiarities were the theme of continual gossip among the other
inhabitants of the gubernatorial mansion.
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