"Your dress will do, but I have been fretting about your winter jacket,
Prissie. There's my best one, though--you know, the quilted satin which
my mother left me; its loose and full, and you shall have it."
"But you want it to go to church in yourself, Aunt Raby."
"I don't often go to church lately, child. I take a power of comfort
lying on the sofa, reading my Bible, and Mr Hayes doesn't see anything
contrary to Scripture in it, for I asked him. Yes, you shall have my
quilted satin jacket to take back to college with you, Prissie, and then
you'll be set up fine."
Priscilla bent forward and kissed Aunt Raby. She made no other
response, but that night before she went to sleep she saw distinctly a
vision of herself. Prissie was as little vain as a girl could be, but
the vision of her own figure in Aunt Raby's black satin quilted jacket
was not a particularly inspiriting one. That jacket, full in the
skirts, long in the shoulders, wide in the sleeves, and enormous round
the neck, would scarcely bear comparison with the neat, tight-fitting
garments which the other girl graduates of St Benet's were wont to
patronise. Prissie felt glad she was not attired in it that unfortunate
day when she sat in Mrs Elliot-Smith's drawing-room; and yet--and yet--
she knew that the poor, quaint, old-world jacket meant love and
self-renunciation.
"Dear Aunt Raby!" whispered the girl.
Tears lay heavily on her eyelashes as she dropped asleep, with one arm
thrown protectingly round her little sister Katie.