And while he was doing these things Priscilla was having calls paid her.  Nothing could exceed her astonishment when about four o’clock, as she was sitting deep in thought and bored on the arm of a horsehair chair, Mrs. Pearce opened the door and without the least warning let in Mrs. Morrison.  Priscilla had promised Fritzing for that one day to stay quietly at the farm, and for the last two hours, finding the farm of an intolerable dulness, she had been engaged in reflections of an extremely complex nature on subjects such as Duty, Will, and Personality.  Her morning in the Baker fields and by the banks of that part of the Sym that meanders through them had tuned her mind to meditation.  The food at one o’clock and the manner of its bringing in by Annalise—­Priscilla had relieved Mrs. Pearce of that office—­tuned it still more.  The blended slipperiness and prickliness of all the things she tried to sit on helped surprisingly; and if I knew how far it is allowable to write of linen I could explain much of her state of mind by a description of the garments in which she was clothed that day.  They were new garments taken straight from the Gerstein box.  They were not even linen,—­how could they be for Fritzing’s three hundred marks?  And their newness had not yet been exposed to the softening influence of any wash-tub.  Straight did they come, in all their crackling stiffness, out of the shop and on to the Princess.  Annalise had been supposed to wash them or cause them to be washed the day before, but Annalise had been far too busy crying to do anything of the sort; and by four o’clock Priscilla was goaded by them into a condition of mind so unworthy that she was thinking quite hard about the Kunitz fine linen and other flesh-pots and actually finding the recollection sweet.  It was a place, Priscilla mused, where her body had been exquisitely cared for.  Those delicate meals, served in spotlessness, surely they had been rather of the nature of poems?  Those web-like garments, soft as a kiss, how beautiful they had been to touch and wear.  True her soul had starved; yes, it had cruelly starved.  But was it then—­she started at her own thought—­was it then being fed at Baker’s?

And into the middle of this question, a tremendous one to be asked on the very threshold of the new life, walked Mrs. Morrison.

“How d’y do,” said Mrs. Morrison.  “The vicar asked me to come and see you.  I hope the Pearces make you comfortable.”

“Well I never,” thought Mrs. Pearce, lingering as was her custom on the door-mat, and shaking her head in sorrow rather than in anger.

Priscilla sat for a moment staring at her visitor.

“You are Miss Schultz, are you not?” asked Mrs. Morrison rather nervously.