So while Miss Prissy turned over her papers, and read out of others extracts about Lord Caermarthen and Sir Clement Cotterel Dormer, and the Princess Royal, and Princess Augusta, in black and silver, with a silver netting upon the coat, and a head stuck full of diamond pins,—and Lady Salisbury and Lady Talbot, and the Duchess of Devonshire, and scarlet satin sacks and diamonds and ostrich-plumes, and the King’s kissing Mrs. Adams,—little Mary’s blue eyes grew larger and larger, seeing far off on the salt green sea, and her ears heard only the ripple and murmur of those waters that carried her heart away,—till, by-and-by, Miss Prissy gave her a smart little tap, which awakened her to the fact that she was wanted again to try on the dress which Miss Prissy’s nimble fingers had basted.
So passed the day,—Miss Prissy busily chattering, clipping, basting,—Mary patiently trying on to an unheard-of extent,—and Mrs. Scudder’s neat room whipped into a perfect froth and foam of gauze, lace, artificial flowers, linings, and other aids, accessories, and abetments.
At dinner, the Doctor, who had been all the morning studying out his Treatise on the Millennium, discoursed tranquilly as usual, innocently ignorant of the unusual cares which were distracting the minds of his listeners. What should he know of dressmakers, good soul? Encouraged by the respectful silence of his auditors, he calmly expanded and soliloquized on his favourite topic, the last golden age of Time, the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, when the purified Earth, like a repentant Psyche, shall be restored to the long-lost favour of a celestial Bridegroom, and glorified saints and angels shall walk familiarly as wedding-guests among men.
‘Sakes alive!’ said little Miss Prissy, after dinner, ‘did I ever hear any one go on like that blessed man?—such a spiritual mind! Oh, Miss Scudder, how you are privileged in having him here! I do really think it is a shame such a blessed man a’n’t thought more of. Why, I could just sit and hear him talk all day. Miss Scudder, I wish sometimes you’d just let me make a ruffled shirt for him, and do it all up myself, and put a stitch in the hem that I learned from my sister Martha, who learned it from a French young lady who was educated in a convent;—nuns, you know, poor things, can do some things right; and I think I never saw such hemstitching as they do there;—and I should like to hemstitch the Doctor’s ruffles; he is so spiritually-minded, it really makes me love him. Why, hearing him talk put me in mind of a real beautiful song of Mr. Watts,—I don’t know as I could remember the tune.’
And Miss Prissy, whose musical talent was one of her special fortes, tuned her voice, a little cracked and quavering, and sang, with a vigorous accent on each accented syllable,—
‘From the third heaven, where God resides,
That holy, happy place,
The New Jerusalem comes down,