I like to see the men
mastered!'
'Don't talk so, Priscy,' said Nancy, blushing. 'You know I don't
mean ever to be married.'
'Oh, you never mean a fiddlestick's end!' said Priscilla, as she
arranged her discarded dress, and closed her bandbox. 'Who shall I
have to work for when father's gone, if you are to go and take notions
in your head and be an old maid, because some folks are no better than
they should be? I haven't a bit o' patience with you- sitting on an
addled egg for ever, as if there was never a fresh un in the world.
One old maid's enough out o' two sisters; and I shall do credit to a
single life, for God A'mighty meant me for it. Come, we can go down
now. I'm as ready as a mawkin can be- there's nothing awanting to
frighten the crows, now I've got my ear-droppers in.'
As the two Miss Lammeters walked into the large parlour together,
anyone who did not know the character of both, might certainly have
supposed that the reason why the square-shouldered, clumsy,
high-featured Priscilla wore a dress the facsimile of her pretty
sister's, was either the mistaken vanity of the one, or the
malicious contrivance of the other in order to set off her own rare
beauty. But the good-natured self-forgetful cheeriness and
common-sense of Priscilla would soon have dissipated the one
suspicion; and the modest calm of Nancy's speech and manners told
clearly of a mind free from all disavowed devices.
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