The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight Part 7

Priscilla was lost in the bright dreams she was weaving, and looked up with the radiance of them still in her eyes at the two figures between her and the sunset.

"My dear young lady," said the vicar kindly, "are you not afraid of catching cold? The evenings are so damp now, and you have chosen a very cold seat."

"I don't feel cold," said Priscilla, smiling at this vision of benevolence.

"But I do think you ought not to linger here," said the vicar.

"I am waiting for my uncle. He's gone to buy a cottage, and ought to be back, really, by now."

"Buy a cottage?" repeated the vicar. "My dear young lady, you say that in the same voice you might use to tell me your uncle had gone to buy a bun."

"What is a bun?" asked Priscilla.

"A bun?" repeated the vicar bewildered, for n.o.body had ever asked him that before.

"Oh I know--" said Priscilla quickly, faintly flus.h.i.+ng, "it's a thing you eat. Is there a special voice for buns?"

"There is for a thing so--well, so momentous as the buying of a cottage."

"Is it momentous? It seems to me so nice and natural."

She looked up at the vicar and his son, calmly scrutinizing first one and then the other, and they stood looking down at her; and each time her eyes rested on Robin they found his staring at her with the frankest expression of surprise and admiration.

"Pardon me," said the vicar, "if I seem inquisitive, but is it one of the Symford cottages your uncle wishes to buy? I did not know any were for sale."

"It's that one by the gate," said Priscilla, slightly turning her head in its direction.

"Is it for sale? Dear me, I never knew Lady Shuttleworth sell a cottage yet."

"I don't know yet if she wants to," said Priscilla; "but Fr--, my uncle, will give any price. And I must have it. I shall--I shall be ill if I don't."

The vicar gazed at her upturned face in perplexity. "Dear me," he said, after a slight pause.

"We must live somewhere," remarked Priscilla.

"Of course you must," said Robin, suddenly and so heartily that she examined his eager face in more detail.

"Quite so, quite so," said the vicar. "Are you staying here at present?"

"Never at the c.o.c.k and Hens?" broke in Robin.

"We're at Baker's Farm."

"Ah yes--poor Mrs. Pearce will be glad of lodgers. Poor soul, poor soul."

"She's a very dirty soul," said Robin; and Priscilla's eyes flashed over him with a sudden sparkle.

"Is she the soul with the holes in its ap.r.o.n?" she asked.

"I expect there are some there. There generally are," said Robin.

They both laughed; but the vicar gently shook his head. "Ah well, poor thing," he said, "she has an uphill life of it. They don't seem able--they don't seem to understand the art of making both ends meet."

"It's a great art," said Robin.

"Perhaps they could be helped," said Priscilla, already arranging in her mind to go and do it.

"They do not belong to the cla.s.s one can help. And Lady Shuttleworth, I am afraid, disapproves of s.h.i.+ftless people too much to do anything in the way of reducing the rent."

"Lady Shuttleworth can't stand people who don't look happy and don't mend their ap.r.o.n," said Robin.

"But it's her own ap.r.o.n," objected Priscilla.

"Exactly," said Robin.

"Well, well, I hope they'll make you comfortable," said the vicar; and having nothing more that he could well say without having to confess to himself that he was inquisitive, he began to draw Robin away. "We shall see you and your uncle on Sunday in church, I hope," he said benevolently, and took off his hat and showed his snow-white hair.

Priscilla hesitated. She was, it is true, a Protestant, it having been arranged on her mother's marriage with the Catholic Grand Duke that every alternate princess born to them was to belong to the Protestant faith, and Priscilla being the alternate princess it came about that of the Grand Duke's three children she alone was not a Catholic.

Therefore she could go to church in Symford as often as she chose; but it was Fritzing's going that made her hesitate, for Fritzing was what the vicar would have called a G.o.dless man, and never went to church.

"You are a member of the Church of England?" inquired the vicar, seeing her hesitate.

"Why, pater, she's not English," burst out Robin.

"Not English?" echoed the vicar.

"Is my English so bad?" asked Priscilla, smiling.

"It's frightfully good," said Robin; "but the 'r's,' you know--"

"Ah, yes. No, I'm not English. I'm German."

"Indeed?" said the vicar, with all the interest that attaches to any unusual phenomenon, and a German in Symford was of all phenomena the most unusual. "My dear young lady, how remarkable. I don't remember ever having met a German before in these parts. Your English is really surprising. I should never have noticed--my boy's ears are quicker than my old ones. Will you think me unpardonably curious if I ask what made you pitch on Symford as a place to live in?"

"My uncle pa.s.sed through it years ago and thought it so pretty that he determined to spend his old age here."

"And you, I suppose, are going to take care of him."

"Yes," said Priscilla, "for we only"--she looked from one to the other and thought herself extremely clever--"we only have each other in the whole wide world."

"Ah, poor child--you are an orphan."

"I didn't say so," said Priscilla quickly, turning red; she who had always been too proud to lie, how was she going to lie now to this aged saint with the snow-white hair?

"Ah well, well," said the vicar, vaguely soothing. "We shall see you on Sunday perhaps. There is no reason that I know of why a member of the German Church should not a.s.sist at the services of the Church of England." And he took off his hat again, and tried to draw Robin away.

But Robin lingered, and Priscilla saw so much bright curiosity in his eyes that she felt she was giving an impression of mysteriousness; and this being the last thing she wanted to do she thought she had better explain a little--always a dangerous course to take--and she said, "My uncle taught languages for years, and is old now and tired, and we both long for the country and to be quiet. He taught me English--that's why it's as good as it is. His name"--She was carried away by the desire to blow out that questioning light in Robin's eyes--"his name is Schultz."

The vicar bowed slightly, and Robin asked with an air of great politeness but still with that light in his eyes if he were to address her, then, as Miss Schultz.