"What ears the girl must have!" whispered Zenobia, with a look of
vexation, partly comic and partly real. "I will confess to you that
I cannot quite make her out. However, I am positively not an
ill-natured person, unless when very grievously provoked,--and as you,
and especially Mr. Hollingsworth, take so much interest in this odd
creature, and as she knocks with a very slight tap against my own
heart likewise,--why, I mean to let her in. From this moment I will
be reasonably kind to her. There is no pleasure in tormenting a
person of one's own sex, even if she do favor one with a little more
love than one can conveniently dispose of; and that, let me say, Mr.
Coverdale, is the most troublesome offence you can offer to a woman."

"Thank you," said I, smiling; "I don't mean to be guilty of it."

She went towards Priscilla, took her hand, and passed her own rosy
finger-tips, with a pretty, caressing movement, over the girl's hair.
The touch had a magical effect. So vivid a look of joy flushed up
beneath those fingers, that it seemed as if the sad and wan Priscilla
had been snatched away, and another kind of creature substituted in
her place. This one caress, bestowed voluntarily by Zenobia, was
evidently received as a pledge of all that the stranger sought from
her, whatever the unuttered boon might be. From that instant, too,
she melted in quietly amongst us, and was no longer a foreign element.
Though always an object of peculiar interest, a riddle, and a theme
of frequent discussion, her tenure at Blithedale was thenceforth
fixed. We no more thought of questioning it, than if Priscilla had
been recognized as a domestic sprite, who had haunted the rustic
fireside of old, before we had ever been warmed by its blaze.

She now produced, out of a work-bag that she had with her, some