“No, Priscy; don’t say so. I begged and prayed of you not to let us have this silk if you’d like another better. I was willing to have your choice, you know I was,” said Nancy in anxious self-vindication.

“Nonsense, child! You know you’d set your heart on this; and reason good, for you’re the colour o’ cream. It ’ud be fine doings for you to dress yourself to suit my skin. What I find fault with is that notion o’ yours as I must dress myself just like you. But you do as you like with me—you always did, from when first you begun to walk. If you wanted to go the field’s length, the field’s length you’d go; and there was no whipping you, for you looked as prim and innicent as a daisy all the while.”

“Priscy,” said Nancy gently, as she fastened a coral necklace exactly like her own round Priscilla’s neck, which was very far from being like her own, “I’m sure I’m willing to give way as far as is right, but who shouldn’t dress alike if it isn’t sisters? Would you have us go about looking as if we were no kin to one another—us that have got no mother and not another sister in the world? I’d do what was right, if I dressed in a gown dyed with cheese-colouring; and I’d rather you’d choose, and let me wear what pleases you.”

“There you go again! You’d come round to the same thing if one talked to you from Saturday night till Saturday morning. It’ll be fine fun to see how you’ll master your husband and never raise your voice above the singing o’ the kettle all the while. 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, any one 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.

Places of honour had been kept for the Miss Lammeters near the head of the principal tea-table in the wainscoted parlour, now looking fresh and pleasant with handsome branches of holly, yew, and laurel, from the abundant growths of the old garden; and Nancy felt an inward flutter that no firmness of purpose could prevent when she saw Mr. Godfrey Cass advancing to lead her to a seat between himself and Mr. Crackenthorp, while Priscilla was called to the opposite side between her father and the Squire. It certainly did make some difference to Nancy that the lover she had given up was the young man of quite the highest consequence in the parish—at home in a venerable and unique parlour, which was the extremity of grandeur in her experience, a parlour where she might one day have been mistress, with the consciousness that she was spoken of as “Madam Cass,” the Squire’s wife. These circumstances exalted her inward drama in her own eyes, and deepened the emphasis with which she declared to herself that not the most dazzling rank should induce her to marry a man whose conduct showed him careless of his character, but that “love once, love always,” was the motto of a true and pure woman, and no man should ever have any right over her which would be a call on her to destroy the dried flowers that she treasured, and always would treasure, for Godfrey Cass’s sake. And Nancy was capable of keeping her word to herself under very trying conditions. Nothing but a becoming blush betrayed the moving thoughts that urged themselves upon her as she accepted the seat next to Mr. Crackenthorp; for she was so instinctively neat and adroit in all her actions, and her pretty lips met each other with such quiet firmness, that it would have been difficult for her to appear agitated.