We have been thus minute in sketching Miss Prissy’s portrait, because we rather like her. She has great power, we admit; and were she a sour-faced, angular, energetic body, with a heart whose secretions had all become acrid by disappointment and dyspepsia, she might be a fearful gnome, against whose family visitations one ought to watch and pray. As it was, she came into the house rather like one of those breezy days of spring, which burst all the blossoms, set all the doors and windows open, make the hens cackle and the turtles peep,—filling a solemn Puritan dwelling with as much bustle and chatter as if a box of martins were setting up housekeeping in it.
Let us now introduce you to the sanctuary of Mrs. Scudder’s own private bedroom, where the committee of exigencies, with Miss Prissy at their head, are seated in solemn session around the camphor-wood trunk.
‘Dress, you know, is of some importance after all,’ said Mrs. Scudder, in that apologetic way in which sensible people generally acknowledge a secret leaning towards anything so very mundane. While the good lady spoke, she was reverentially unpinning and shaking out of their fragrant folds creamy crape shawls of rich Chinese embroidery,—India muslin, scarfs, and aprons; and already her hands were undoing the pins of a silvery damask linen in which was wrapped her own wedding-dress. ‘I have always told Mary,’ she continued, ‘that, though our hearts ought not to be set on these things, yet they had their importance.’
‘Certainly, certainly, ma’am,’ chimed in Miss Prissy. ‘I was saying to Miss General Wilcox, the other day, I didn’t see how we could “consider the lilies of the field,” without seeing the importance of looking pretty. I’ve got a flower-de-luce in my garden now, from one of the new roots that old Major Seaforth brought over from France, which is just the most beautiful thing you ever did see; and I was thinking, as I looked at it to-day, that if women’s dresses only grew on ’em as handsome and well-fitting as that, why, there wouldn’t be any need of me; but as it is, why, we must think, if we want to look well. Now peach-trees, I s’pose, might bear just as good peaches without the pink blows; but then who would want ’em to? Miss Deacon Twitchel, when I was up there the other day, kept kind o’ sighin’, ’cause Cerintha Ann is getting a new pink silk made up, ’cause she said it was such a dying world it didn’t seem right to call off our attention: but I told her it wasn’t any pinker than the apple-blossoms; and what with robins and blue-birds, and one thing or another, the Lord is always calling off our attention; and I think we ought to observe the Lord’s works and take a lesson from ’em.’
‘Yes, you are quite right,’ said Mrs. Scudder, rising and shaking out a splendid white brocade, on which bunches of moss-roses were looped to bunches of violets by graceful fillets of blue ribbons. ‘This was my wedding-dress,’ she said.
Little Miss Prissy sprang up and clapped her hands in an ecstasy.
‘Well, now, Miss Scudder, really!—did I ever see anything more beautiful? It really goes beyond anything I ever saw. I don’t think, in all the brocades I ever made up, I ever saw so pretty a pattern as this.’
‘Mr. Scudder chose it for me himself, at the silk-factory in Lyons,’ said Mrs. Scudder, with pardonable pride, ‘and I want it tried on to Mary.’
‘Really, Miss Scudder, this ought to be kept for her wedding-dress,’ said Miss Prissy, as she delightedly bustled about the congenial task. ‘I was up to Miss Marvyn’s, a-working, last week,’ she said, as she threw the dress over Mary’s head, ‘and she said that James expected to make his fortune in that voyage, and come home and settle down.’