no approach to bloom, there were indications that the girl had human
blood in her veins.

Priscilla came softly to my bedside, and held out an article of
snow-white linen, very carefully and smoothly ironed. She did not
seem bashful, nor anywise embarrassed. My weakly condition, I
suppose, supplied a medium in which she could approach me.

"Do not you need this?" asked she. "I have made it for you." It was
a nightcap!

"My dear Priscilla," said I, smiling, "I never had on a nightcap in
my life! But perhaps it will be better for me to wear one, now that
I am a miserable invalid. How admirably you have done it! No, no; I
never can think of wearing such an exquisitely wrought nightcap as
this, unless it be in the daytime, when I sit up to receive company."

"It is for use, not beauty," answered Priscilla. "I could have
embroidered it and made it much prettier, if I pleased."

While holding up the nightcap and admiring the fine needlework, I
perceived that Priscilla had a sealed letter which she was waiting
for me to take. It had arrived from the village post-office that
morning. As I did not immediately offer to receive the letter, she
drew it back, and held it against her bosom, with both hands clasped
over it, in a way that had probably grown habitual to her. Now, on
turning my eyes from the nightcap to Priscilla, it forcibly struck me
that her air, though not her figure, and the expression of her face,
but not its features, had a resemblance to what I had often seen in a
friend of mine, one of the most gifted women of the age. I cannot