"What's in it about pride?" inquired Prissy quickly.
"Do you not recollect? The Lord said, 'How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another.' Here it is." She took the little volume from the mantel shelf and found the place. Prissy looked at it.
"What's the harm?" she said.
"Never mind, if you don't understand. The Lord said it; and he knows."
"What's come to you?" Prissy asked suddenly. "You're twice as much of a girl as you was this mornin'."
"Am I?"
"Somethin's done you a heap o' good. Your face is fired up; and your eyes is two colours, and there's somethin' shinin' out o' 'em."
"I do feel better," said Rotha soberly. And after that she was careful to be sober as long as supper lasted.
When she went up to her room she sat down to think at leisure. The light was fading out of the depths of the tulip tree; the stars were twinkling in the dark blue; the still air was a little frosty. Yes, the year had sped on a good part of its course, since that May evening when Rotha had first made friends with the big tulip tree. Near five months ago it was, and now the days were growing short again. O was it possible that her release had come? And not the release she had hoped for, but this? so much better! Only five months; and her little imprisonment was ended, and its lessons all—were they all—learned? With her heart filling and swelling, Rotha sat by her window and thought everything over, one thing after another. She had trusted; she might have trusted better!
Her aunt's sending her to this place had separated her from nothing, not even from Mr. Digby. Here he was, and had her again under his protection; and it was he henceforth who would say what she should do and where she should go. Not Mrs. Busby henceforth. Rotha's heart thrilled and throbbed with inexpressible joy. Not without queer other thrills also, of what might be described as an instinct of scruple; a certain inner consciousness that in this condition of things there was somewhat anomalous and difficult to adjust. Yet I am by no means sure that this consciousness did in any wise abate the joy. Rotha went over now in imagination all her interview with Mr. Southwode; recalled all he said, and remembered how he looked at each turn of the conversation. And the more she mused, the more her heart bounded. Till at last she recollected that there was something else to be' done before eleven o'clock to- morrow; and she went from reverie to very busy activity.