Candace sat on a fragment of a granite boulder which lay there, her black face relieved against a clump of yellow mulleins, then in majestic altitude. On her lap was spread a check pocket-handkerchief, containing rich slices of cheese and a store of her favourite brown dough-nuts.
‘Now, Miss Prissy,’ she said, ‘der’s reason in all things; and a good deal more in some things dan der is in others. Dere’s a good deal more reason in two young, handsome folks coming together dan der is in——’
Candace finished the sentence by an emphatic flourish of her dough-nut.
‘Now as long as everybody thought Massa Jim was dead, dere wa’n’t nothin’ in de world else to be done but for Miss Mary to marry the Doctor. But, good Lord! I heard him a-talkin’ to Mrs. Marvyn last night; it kinder most broke my heart. Why dem two poor creeturs—dey’s just as onhappy’s dey can be; and she’s got too much feelin’ for the Doctor to say a word, and I say he orter be told on’t; dat’s what I say,’ said Candace, giving a decisive bite to her dough-nut.
‘I say so too,’ said Miss Prissy: ‘why I never had such feelings in my life as I did yesterday when that young man came down to our house; he was just as pale as a cloth. I tried to say a word to Mrs. Scudder, but she snapped me up so; she’s an awful decided woman when her mind’s made up. I was telling Cerinthy Ann Twitchel, she come round me this noon, that it didn’t exactly seem to me right that things should go on as they’re gone to; and says I, “Cerinthy Ann, I don’t know anything what to do.” And says she, “If I was you, Miss Prissy, I know what I’d do; I’d tell the Doctor.” Says she, “Nobody ever takes offence at anything you do, Miss Prissy.” To be sure,’ added Miss Prissy, ‘I have talked to people about a good many things that it’s rather strange I should, ’cause I ain’t one somehow that can let things go that seem to want doing. I always told folks that I should spoil a novel before it got half-way through the first volume, by blirting out some of those things that they let go trailing on till everybody gets so mixed up they don’t know what they’re doing.’
‘Well, now, honey,’ said Candace, authoritatively, ‘ef you’ve got any notion o’ that kind, I think it must a come from de good Lord; and I ’vise ye to be ’tendin’ to it right away. You just go ’long and tell de Doctor yo’self all you knows, and den let’s see what’ll come on’t. I tell you I b’lieves it’ll be one o’ the best day’s works you ever did in your life.’
‘Well,’ said Miss Prissy, ‘I guess to-night before I go to bed I’ll make a dive at him. When a thing’s once out it’s out, and can’t be got in again, even if people don’t like it, and that’s a mercy anyhow. It really makes me feel most wicked to think of it, for the Doctor is the blessedest man.’
‘That’s what he is,’ said Candace. ‘But den de blessedest men in the world ought fur to know de truth, that’s what I think.’
‘Yes, true enough,’ said Miss Prissy, ‘I’ll tell him anyway.’
Miss Prissy was as good as her word, for that evening when the Doctor had retired to his study, she took her light in her hand, and walking softly as a cat, tapped rather timidly at the study door, which the Doctor opening, said benignantly—