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A Sweet Girl Graduate
A Sweet Girl Graduate
Chapter One
Going out into the World
Priscilla’s trunk was neatly packed. It was a new trunk, and had a nice canvas covering over it. The canvas was bound with red braid, and Priscilla’s initials were worked on the top in large plain letters. Her initials were P.P.P., and they stood for Priscilla Penywern Peel. The trunk was corded and strapped and put away, and Priscilla stood by her aunt’s side in the little parlour of Penywern Cottage.
“Well, I think I’ve told you everything,” said the aunt.
“Oh, yes, Aunt Raby, I sha’n’t forget. I’m to write once a week, and I’m to try not to be nervous. I don’t suppose I shall be – I don’t see why I should. Girls aren’t nervous nowadays, are they?”
“I don’t know, my dear. It seems to me that if they aren’t they ought to be. I can understand girls doing hard things if they must. I can understand anyone doing anything that has to be done, but as to not being nervous – well – there! Sit down, Prissie, child, and take your tea.”
Priscilla was tall and slight. Her figure was younger than her years, which were nearly nineteen, but her face was older. It was an almost careworn face, thoughtful, grave, with anxious lines already deepening the seriousness of the too serious mouth.
Priscilla cut some bread-and-butter, and poured out some tea for her aunt and for herself.
Miss Rachel Peel was not the least like her niece. She was short and rather dumpy. She had a sensible, downright sort of face, and she took life with a gravity which would have oppressed a less earnest spirit than Priscilla’s.
“Well, I’m tired,” she said, when the meal was over. “I suppose I’ve done a great deal more than I thought I had all day. I think I’ll go to bed early. We have said all our last words, haven’t we, Priscilla?”
“Pretty nearly, Aunt Raby.”
“Oh, yes, that reminds me – there’s one thing more. Your fees will be all right, of course, and your travelling, and I have arranged about your washing money.”