he door and without the least warning let
in Mrs. Morrison. Priscilla had promised Fritzing for that one day to
stay quietly at the farm, and for the last two hours, finding the farm
of an intolerable dulness, she had been engaged in reflections of an
extremely complex nature on subjects such as Duty, Will, and
Personality. Her morning in the Baker fields and by the banks of that
part of the Sym that meanders through them had tuned her mind to
meditation. The food at one o'clock and the manner of its bringing in
by Annalise--Priscilla had relieved Mrs. Pearce of that office--tuned
it still more. The blended slipperiness and prickliness of all the
things she tried to sit on helped surprisingly; and if I knew how far
it is allowable to write of linen I could explain much of her state of
mind by a description of the garments in which she was clothed that
day. They were new garments taken straight from the Gerstein box.
They were not even linen,--how could they be for Fritzing's three
hundred marks? And their newness had not yet been exposed to the
softening influence of any wash-tub. Straight did they come, in all
their crackling stiffness, out of the shop and on to the Princess.
Annalise had been supposed to wash them or cause them to be washed the
day before, but Annalise had been far too busy crying to do anything
of the sort; and by four o'clock Priscilla was goaded by them into a
condition of mind so unworthy that she was thinking quite hard about
the Kunitz fine linen and other flesh-pots and actually finding the
recollection sweet. It was a place, Priscilla mused, where her body
had been exquisitely cared for. Those delicate meals, served in
spotlessness, surely they had been rather of the nature of poems?
Those web-like garments, soft as a kiss, how beautiful they had been
to touch and wear. True her soul had starved; yes, it had cruelly
starved. But was it then--she started at her own thought--was it then
being fed at Baker's?

And into the middle of this question, a tremendous one to be asked on
the very threshold of the new life, walked Mrs. Morrison.

"How d'y do," said Mrs. Morrison. "The vicar asked me to come and see
you. I hope the Pearces make you comfortable."

"Well I never," thought Mrs. Pearce, lingering as was her custom on
the door-mat, and shaking her head in sorrow rather than in anger.

Priscilla sat for a moment staring at her visitor.

"You are Miss Schultz, are you not?" asked Mrs. Morriso