Mrs. Scudder looked reprovingly at Miss Prissy, and for a few moments
there was great shaking of heads and a whispered conference between
the two ladies, ending in Miss Prissy's going off, saying, as she went
down-stairs,--

"Well, if women will do so, I, for my part, can't blame the men."

In a few moments Miss Prissy rushed back as much discomposed as a
clucking hen who has seen a hawk.

"Well, Miss Scudder, what do you think? Here's Colonel Burr come to call
on the ladies!"

Mrs. Scudder's first movement, in common with all middle-aged
gentlewomen, was to put her hand to her head and reflect that she had
not on her best cap; and Mary looked down at her dimpled hands, which
were blue from the contact with mixed yarn she had just been spinning.

"Now I'll tell you what," said Miss Prissy,--"wasn't it lucky you had me
here? for I first saw him coming in at the gate, and I whipped in quick
as a wink and opened the best-room window-shutters, and then I was back
at the door, and he bowed to me as if I'd been a queen, and says he,
'Miss Prissy, how fresh you're looking this morning!' You see, I was in
working at the Vernons', but I never thought as he'd noticed me. And
then he inquired in the handsomest way for the ladies and the Doctor,
and so I took him into the parlor and settled him down, and then I ran
into the study, and you may depend upon it I flew round lively for a few
minutes. I got the Doctor's study-gown off, and got his best coat on,
and put on his wig for him, and started him up kinder lively,--you know
it takes me to get him down into this world,--and so there he's
in talking with him; and so you can just slip down and dress
yourselves,--easy as not."

Meanwhile Colonel Burr was entertaining the simple-minded Doctor with
all the grace of a young neophyte come to sit at the feet of superior
truth. There are some people who receive from Nature as a gift a sort of
graceful facility of sympathy, by which they incline to take on, for
the time being, the sentiments and opinions of those with whom they
converse, as the chameleon was fabled to change its hue with every
surrounding. Such are often supposed to be wilfully acting a part, as
exerting themselves to flatter and deceive, when in fact they are only
framed so sensitive to the sphere of mental emanation which surrounds
others that it would require an exertion not in some measure to
harmonize with it. In approaching others in conversation, they are l