One dull afternoon Amy and Priscilla, wandering about, found their way into the Parliament building, and after admiring the stately old portraits in the rooms of the historical society, spent an hour or two over some of the old books and papers in the archives. This was especially gratifying to Priscilla, because she was thus able to satisfy her curiosity about the exiled Loyalists. Their sufferings seemed all the more real when written out in detail in these old manuscript volumes, and as she read, she sighed. The sigh was not wholly for the miseries of the past. That very morning she had received a letter from Eunice that had set her thinking.
"I am so glad [wrote Eunice] that you like Halifax. But it does seem strange, doesn't it, that I have never been there—in the capital of our Province? Sometimes it seems as if I should never go anywhere, though Balfour says that he will send me to college, that I can depend on that. But that will be only to Acadia, and I shall have to wait so long, until he has a law practice—and when will that be? Besides, he thinks now that he may have to stay out of college a year, if not give it up altogether. It's the mortgage on the house. There's some kind of trouble about it, and Balfour is determined not to let it go. It would just break mother's heart. But I oughtn't to make this a complaining letter, when one of the pleasantest things this summer—or any summer—has been my acquaintance with you,—and the others, too, of course, though I didn't know them so well. Please give them my love, but the most for yourself.
"Your affectionate
"Eunice."
Now Eunice was really so fond of Priscilla that nothing was farther from her thoughts than to make her friend unhappy. Yet such was Priscilla's sympathy for her Annapolis friend that the remembrance of the letter made her feel sad, even as she sat with Amy in the old library.
"If papa had only lived," she thought, "I could have asked him to do something, but now,—why, Eunice herself would be surprised to know how little pocket money I have. Not that Eunice wants anything, but it would be so delightful to pay off that mortgage, and then make sure that Balfour could get through college, and then see him put Eunice through college, and then perhaps she could come up and take post-graduate work with me at Radcliffe." Then, amused at the rapidity with which her thoughts were running away with her, for Priscilla had not yet passed her own finals for college, she laughed aloud. Unexpectedly the clouds had been chased away.
"Priscilla," said Amy, "I am delighted to hear you laugh. You have been altogether too quiet to-day. Surely you are not homesick again."
"Oh, no, not homesick, only thinking."
"Tell me then, so that I may laugh too,—unless it's a secret."
"Oh, no, it's hardly worth mentioning; besides, it has ended in a foolish wish—if only I had money like Martine!"
"Martine cares little for money," responded Amy, with some sharpness. This was not the first time that she had thought Priscilla too ready to criticise Martine.