Priscilla spoke in a remarkably cheerful voice, but the appalling magnitude of three years could not be diminished, and the three little sisters who were to stay behind with Aunt Raby were still disposed to view things dismally.
“If she wasn’t just what she is—” began Hattie.
“If she didn’t think the least tiny morsel of a lark wrong—” continued Rose.
“Why, then we could pull along somehow,” sighed Hattie.
“Oh, you’ll pull along as it is,” said Priscilla. “I’ll write to you as often as ever I can. If possible I’ll keep a sort of journal, and send it to you. And perhaps there’ll be stories and larks in it. Now you really must go to sleep, for I have to get up so early in the morning. Katie, darling, I’ll make a corner for you in my bed to-night. Won’t that be a treat?”
“Oh, yes, Prissie.”
Katie’s pale face was lit up by a radiant smile; Hattie and Rose lay down side by side, and closed their eyes. In a few moments they were sound asleep.
As they lay in the sound happy sleep of healthy childhood Priscilla bent over them and kissed them. Then before she lay down herself she knelt by the window, looked up at the clear, dark sky in which the moon sailed in majesty, bent her head, murmured a few words of prayer, then crept into bed by her little sister’s side.
Prissie felt full of courage and good resolves. She was going out into the world to-morrow, and she was quite determined that the world should not conquer her, although she knew that she was a very poor maiden with a specially heavy load of care on her young shoulders.