"I cannot produce my guinea," answered Priscilla; "but believe me, my dear aunt, when I assure you that I never touched your box."
Emily, who had her reasons for wishing the subject might be dropped, though not from any motive of tenderness for her cousin, now earnestly intreated her mamma not to inquire any farther into the matter, as it only distressed the poor thing, and would make her utter a thousand falsities. But old Martha, their maid, who had stood all the time pinching the strings of her apron, clasping her hands together, and then lifting them up to heaven, with many other gestures which marked her impatience, now no longer able to contain her indignation, burst out like thunder, and asked Emily how she could possibly stand there, looking her mamma in the face, and presume to talk of falsities, when she must be conscious she was at that moment guilty, not only of a most terrible and wicked falsity, in accusing an innocent person of the fault she had herself committed, but was also making the most ungrateful return that any one could be capable of, for an action which certainly deserved the greatest praise, and which she must be conscious she owed to her cousin's generosity and kindness. She then proceeded to acquaint her mistress, that walking with Priscilla round the garden, about half an hour after she had left the house, and coming near the parlour window, which happened to be open, they had perceived the netting-box lying on the marble hearth, broken into a dozen pieces, and Emily with her back towards them, picking them up; that Priscilla had, in a low whisper, entreated her in the most earnest manner not to speak; and that having stood a little aside, they had seen her go and throw all the pieces into the pond in the front garden, and then run up stairs as fast as possible.
"The dear Miss Priscilla," continued old nurse, "then begged me, as the greatest of all favours, to go immediately into the town, to the shop where you had bought the netting-box, and with her guinea to get one exactly like it: and this I did to oblige her, and because it never was in my power to refuse her any thing she asks, though I must say I thought Miss Emily little deserved her kindness; for this is but one out of a hundred stories she has told of her, and ill-natured tricks she has played her, in return for her constantly doing every thing she could to oblige her, and for the trouble she has taken so many times to hide her faults. I thought the box I purchased so exactly like yours, Madam, that I concluded you never would discover what had happened; and Miss Priscilla was quite happy in thinking you would be spared the vexation of knowing it had been broken, and her cousin the anger which she would have incurred, by disobeying your orders. We were, however, disappointed; but Miss Emily must have guessed, when her cousin could not produce her guinea, what use she had made of it; and that was the reason why she wished you to drop the subject, for she might well suppose her falsity and ill nature must at length be made known to you."
It is almost needless to add, that Emily entirely lost her mamma's good opinion; Priscilla lived very happily from that time, affectionately beloved by Mrs. Hamilton and her cousin Lucy, and doated on by old Martha, who never forgot to entertain her friends and acquaintance with the story of the broken netting-box, so disgraceful to Miss Emily, and so much to the honour of her darling Priscilla.
THE TRAVELLERS.
At six o'clock on a fine morning in the beginning of September, Mrs. Cecil, with her daughter Matilda, stepped into a post-chaise in order to begin a journey towards London.
The house she had for some time inhabited stood in a distant and romantic part of Wales, many miles from the public road, so that they could advance but slowly, and often walked up steep hills, and over craggy mountains, either from regard to their own safety, or because they were tired of the carriage.
Matilda, after riding a whole day, wished she could perform the remaining part of the journey on foot, and often urged her mamma (even when the roughness of the road did not render it necessary) to get out of the chaise, that she might run up a rising ground, look round her, and pick up and examine a number of different things which caught her eye and struck her fancy; and Mrs. Cecil, who walked but slowly, was often left far behind, whilst her daughter made little excursions, and amused herself by talking to the country people.
The second day after their departure from home, she told her mamma she had, in one of her rambles into a narrow lane, seen a poor boy in great danger of being beaten by a woman who appeared to be mistress of a small cottage adjoining to that at the door of which he stood, and who threatened to lay a stick (which she held in her hand) over his shoulders, if ever he dared to touch her pears again. "But," said Matilda, "the boy insisted that they were not her pears, but his father's, and that he was in his father's garden when he picked them from a bough which hung down almost into his mouth."