"Oh, yes; I went out this morning and bought him a copy of Longfellow. He had never owned one himself, and was anxious to have it. I have asked him to write us so that we shall get the letter at Grand Pré."
"It's time Priscilla had a protégée," said Martine, "though she doesn't seem the kind of person to adopt anything very warmly except her own opinions."
This was a rather sharp remark for Martine to make, and it convinced Amy of something that she had tried to doubt—that the two girls were really rather far apart, "and both such charming girls," she said to herself.
Martine's letters with the Pubnico and Shelburne postmarks had given Priscilla considerable concern. Though not a meddler, she yet saw Martine's lack of frankness about those letters. Priscilla knew that neither was in the handwriting of Fritz Tomkins, and she was sure that they were written by the Freshman with him whom she knew only by the name of "Taps." She was now quite convinced, also, that it really was Martine whom Amy had seen wheeling through the streets of Yarmouth with this same youth. That it was no concern of hers she realized perfectly; and yet, she wondered if it might not be her duty to tell Mrs. Redmond what she knew. Priscilla was over-conscientious; she was always more ready to disclose her own faults than to conceal them,—to disclose, at least, faults that she herself recognized. She did not altogether realize that a certain form of censoriousness was growing upon her; that she was too much inclined to measure all people by her own standard.
Thus many little things that Martine did quite innocently and naturally seemed to Priscilla bits of affectation. Martine's hand was ever in her pocket. When it was a question of buying books or fruit or some other little thing for the traveller, Martine always managed to pay for it, and Priscilla thought that her readiness to do this came from a desire to display the size of her allowance. Priscilla herself, on the other hand, had to be careful about little expenses, and while their present trip called for no great expenditure, she hated to be obliged so often to thank Martine for small luxuries. Then, too, Martine had an extravagant way of talking that disturbed the serious Priscilla. She could not say that she had ever found Martine in a real untruth. Still, Martine's way was not her way, and instead of drawing nearer together as the journey progressed, the two girls were farther apart.
Martine, on her part, thought Priscilla rather old-fashioned, but accounted for the seriousness of her dress and her manner by the fact that she was still in mourning for her father, who had died of fever contracted in Cuba at the beginning of the late war.
Perhaps it was because she realized that her prejudices were a little unreasonable, that Priscilla hesitated about speaking to Amy or Mrs. Redmond regarding the suspicious postmarks.
The long "historical disquisition," as Martine called it, that Amy had given them on their first day at Annapolis, was not immediately followed by another. Their mornings were spent in sketching in the neighborhood, and their afternoons in driving. One day they crossed the Grandville Ferry and went down to the old fort near Goat Island. But though they all professed to see slight traces of the earthworks, it required imagination rather than eyesight to discern even a slight trace of Poutrincourt's fort.
"It's one of the ironies of history," said Amy, "that tradition should speak of this as a Scotch fort, for the Scotch were here so short a time before the French were again in power."
"What became of the Scotch?" asked Priscilla.