“How has your dress worn, Prissie?” said the elder woman, after a pause. “My sakes, child, you have got your best brown cashmere on! A beautiful fine bit of cashmere it was, too. I bought it out of the money I got for the lambs’ wool.”
Aunt Raby stretched out her hand, and, taking up a fold of the cashmere, she rubbed it softly between her finger and thumb.
“It’s as fine as velvet,” she said, “and I put strong work into it, too. It isn’t a bit worn, is it, Prissie?”
“No, Aunt Raby, except just round the tail. I got it very wet one day, and the colour went a trifle; but nothing to signify.”
A vivid picture rose up before Priscilla’s eyes as she spoke of Mrs Elliot-Smith’s drawing-room, and the dainty, disdainful ladies in their gay attire, and her own poor, little, forlorn figure in her muddy cashmere dress—the same dress Aunt Raby considered soft and beautiful as velvet.
“Oh, Aunt Raby,” she said with sudden impulse, “a great many things have happened to me since I went away. On the whole I have had a very good time.”
Aunt Raby opened her mouth to emit a prodigious yawn.
“I don’t know how it is,” she said, “but I’m a bit drowsy to-night. I suppose it’s the weather. The day was quite a muggy one. I’ll hear your news another time, Priscilla; but don’t you be turned with the vanities of the world, Priscilla. Life’s but a passing day: you mind that when you’re young, and it won’t come on you as a shock when you are old. I’m glad the cashmere has worn well—ay, that I am, Prissie. But don’t put it on in the morning, my love, for it’s a sin to wear through beautiful fine stuff like that. And, even if the colour is gone a bit round the hem, the stuff itself isn’t worn, and looks don’t signify. You’ll have to make up your mind to wear the cashmere for best again next term, Prissie, for, though I’m not pinched in any way, I’m not overflush either, my love.”
Priscilla, who had been sitting in a low chair near her aunt, now rose to her feet.
“Ought we not to come to bed?” she said. “If you don’t feel tired, you look it, Aunt Raby. Come upstairs, do, and let me help you to take your things off, and put you into bed. Come, Aunt Raby, it will be like old times to help you, you know.”