Priscilla bent forward and kissed Aunt Raby. She made no other response, but that night before she went to sleep she saw distinctly a vision of herself. Prissie was as little vain as a girl could be, but the vision of her own figure in Aunt Raby’s black satin quilted jacket was not a particularly inspiriting one. That jacket, full in the skirts, long in the shoulders, wide in the sleeves, and enormous round the neck, would scarcely bear comparison with the neat, tight-fitting garments which the other girl graduates of St. Benet’s were wont to patronise. Prissie felt glad she was not attired in it that unfortunate day when she sat in Mrs Elliot-Smith’s drawing-room; and yet—and yet—she knew that the poor, quaint, old-world jacket meant love and self-renunciation.
“Dear Aunt Raby!” whispered the girl.
Tears lay heavily on her eyelashes as she dropped asleep, with one arm thrown protectingly round her little sister Katie.
Chapter Twenty Three.
The Fashion of the Day.
A thick mist lay over everything. Christmas had come and gone, and Priscilla’s trunk was packed once more—Aunt Raby’s old-world jacket between folds of tissue-paper, lying on the top of other homely garments.
The little sisters were in bed and asleep, and Aunt Raby lay on the sofa. Prissie was accustomed to her face now, so she did not turn it away from the light. The white lips, the chalky grey tint under the eyes, the deep furrows round the sunken temples, were all familiar to the younger “Miss Peel.” She had fitted once more into the old sordid life. She saw Hattie in her slipshod feet, and Katie and Rose in their thin winter jackets, which did not half keep out the cold. She saw and partook of the scanty meals, and tried to keep warm by the wretched fires. Once more she was part and parcel of the household. The children were so accustomed to her that they forgot she was going away again.
To-night, however, the fact was brought back to her. Katie cried when she saw the packed trunk, Hattie pouted, and flopped herself about and became unmanageable. Rose put on her most discontented manner and voice, and finding that Prissie had earned no money during the past term, gave utterance to sceptical thoughts.