Till evening she lay there alone, and then the steps came up again,
accompanied this time by the tinkle of china and spoons. Priscilla was
sitting at the window looking on to the churchyard, staring into the
dark with its swaying branches and few faint stars, and when she heard
him outside the door listening again in anxious silence she got up and
opened it.
Fritzing held a plate of food in one hand and a glass of milk in the
other. The expression on his face was absurdly like that of a mother
yearning over a sick child. "_Mein liebes Kind_--_mein liebes Kind_,"
he stammered when she came out, so woebegone, so crushed, so utterly
unlike any Priscilla of any one of her moods that he had ever seen
before. Her eyes were red, her eyelids heavy with tears, her face was
pinched and narrower, the corners of her mouth had a most piteous
droop, her very hair, pushed back off her forehead, seemed sad, and
hung in spiritless masses about her neck and ears. "_Mein liebes
Kind_," stammered poor Fritzing; and his hand shook so that he upset
some of the milk.
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