“Priscilla, I’m glad you’re here rather than with those gay friends of yours in London. I suppose Lady Judith Carr or her daughters gave you these clothes, did they not?”
“Well, I earned them hard enough putting up with all my lady’s humors and the girls’ jealous fancies,” pouted Pris. “I was glad enough when you and brother Will wrote and offered me a home,—not but what Lady Judith was good to me and called me her daughter; but, Elsie, ’twas not they who gave me the laced cravat, ’twas—’twas”—
“Well, out with it, little sister! Who was it, if not our mother’s old friend?”
“Why, Elsie, ’twas a noble gentleman that I met with them down at Bath, and—sister—he is coming over here to marry me right soon.”
“Nay, then, but that’s news indeed! And what may be his name, pet?”
“Sir Christopher Gardiner, and he’s a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre.”
And Pris, fondling the lace of her cravat, smiled proudly into her sister’s astonished face; but before either could speak, Barbara Standish and Priscilla Alden appeared at the open door, the latter exclaiming in her blithe voice,—
“What, Alice, still in your workaday kirtle! Barbara and I came thus betimes to see if aught remained that we might do before the folk gather.”
“Thank you, both; I—I—nay, then, I’m a little put about, dear friends; I hardly know,—well, well! Priscilla Carpenter, come you into my bedroom and help me do on my clothes, and if you two will look about and see what is ready and what is lacking, I shall be more than grateful. Come, Pris!”
“Something has chanced more than we know about!” suggested Priscilla Alden, as the bedroom door closed behind the sisters.