CHAPTER XV.
A STRANGE THING HAPPENS TO ME.
For several days after our hot chase after Priscilla, we saw nothing of this ex-emissary. Indeed, we began to be afraid that something had happened to her. She was such a regular attendant at the hotel-door-market, that people were talking about missing her black face and her chattering tongue. But she turned up one morning as gay and skippy as ever, and we saw her leaning against the side of one of the door-ways of the court in her favorite easy attitude, with her head on one side and one foot crossed over the other, which made her look like a bronze figure such as they put under kerosene lamps. In one hand she had her big straw hat, and in the other a bunch of rose-buds. The moment she saw Corny she stepped up to her.
"Wont you buy some rose-buds, missy?" she said. "De puttiest rose-buds I ever brought you yit."
Corny looked at her with a withering glare, but Priscilla didn't wither a bit. She was a poor hand at withering.
"Please buy 'em, missy. I kep' 'em fur you. I been a-keepin' 'em all de mornin'."
"I don't see how you dare ask me to buy your flowers!" exclaimed Corny. "Go away! I never want to see you again. After all you did——"
"Please, missy, buy jist this one bunch. These is the puttiest red-rose buds in dis whole town. De red roses nearly all gone."
"Nearly all gone," said I. "What do you mean by telling such a fib?"—I was going to say "lie," which was nearer the truth (if that isn't a bull); but there were several ladies about, and Priscilla herself was a girl. "You know that there are red roses here all the year."
"Please, boss," said Priscilla, rolling her eyes at me like an innocent calf, "wont you buy dese roses fur missy? They's the puttiest roses I ever brought her yit."