The Convalescent

For several minutes together sometimes, while my auditory nerves
retained the susceptibility of delicate health, I used to hear a low,
pleasant murmur ascending from the room below; and at last ascertained
it to be Priscilla's voice, babbling like a little brook to
Hollingsworth. She talked more largely and freely with him than with
Zenobia, towards whom, indeed, her feelings seemed not so much to be
confidence as involuntary affection. I should have thought all the
better of my own qualities had Priscilla marked me out for the third
place in her regards. But, though she appeared to like me tolerably
well, I could never flatter myself with being distinguished by her as
Hollingsworth and Zenobia were.

One forenoon, during my convalescence, there came a gentle tap at my
chamber door. I immediately said, "Come in, Priscilla!" with an acute
sense of the applicant's identity. Nor was I deceived. It was really
Priscilla,--a pale, large-eyed little woman (for she had gone far
enough into her teens to be, at least, on the outer limit of girlhood),
but much less wan than at my previous view of her, and far better
conditioned both as to health and spirits. As I first saw her, she had
reminded me of plants that one sometimes observes doing their best to
vegetate among the bricks of an enclosed court, where there is scanty
soil and never any sunshine. At present, though with no approach to
bloom, there were indications that the girl had human blood in her
veins.