Here Prissy waited, like the Scholar Gipsy, for the light from heaven to fall; but, alas, the light refused to come to time. Well, then, she must just go on without it as many another eager soul had done before her. There only remained to make the final preparations.
On the morrow therefore she waited carefully after early dinner till General Smith and Toady Lion had gone off in the direction of the mill-dam. Then she took out the little basket which she had concealed in the crypt of San Dominico—that is to say in the potato house. It stood ready packed and covered with a white linen cloth.
It was a basket which had been prepared upon the strictest missionary models. She had no printed authorities which went the length of telling her what provision for the way, what bribes and presents Saint Catherine carried forth to appease withal the enemies of her city and country. But there was on record the exact provision of the mission-chest of a woman, who in her time went forth to turn to gentleness the angry hearts of brigands and robbers—one Abigail, the wife of a certain churl of Maon, a village near to the roots of Mount Carmel.
True, Prissy could not quite make up the tale of her presents on the same generous and wholesale scale. She had to preach according to her stipend, like the Glasgow wife of the legend, who, upon the doctor ordering her husband champagne and oysters, informed a friend that "poor folk like us couldna juist gie Tammas champeen-an'-ighsters, but we did the next best thing—we gied him whelks-an'-ginger-beer."
So since it might have attracted some attention, even on pastures so well stocked as those of Mr. Picton Smith of Windy Standard, if Prissy had taken with her "five sheep ready dressed," she had to be content with half of a sheep's-head-pie, which she had begged "to give away" from Janet Sheepshanks. To this she added a four pound loaf she had bought in Edam with her own money (Abigail's two hundred being distinctly out of her reach)—together with the regulation cluster of raisins and cake of figs which were both well within her means. In addition, since Prissy was a strict teetotaler, she took with her a little apparatus for making tea, some sugar and cream from the pantry, and her largest and best set of dolls' cups and saucers.
All this occupied a good deal of room and was exceedingly heavy, so that Prissy had very often to rest on the way towards the castle. She might have failed altogether, but that she saw Mike raking the gravel of the path near the edge of the water, and asked him to carry the basket for her over the stepping-stones.
Prince Michael, who as he often remarked was "spoiling for another taste of Donnybrook," conveyed the basket over Edam Water for his young mistress, without the least idea of the strange quest upon which the girl was going.
He laid it down and looked at the linen cover.
"Faix," he said, "sure 'tis a long road to sind a young lady wid a heavy load like that!"
Now, this was his mode of inviting an explanation, but Prissy was far too wise to offer one. She merely thanked him and went on her way towards the castle.