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=_298._= A PICTURE OF GIRLHOOD.
Priscilla had now grown to be a very pretty girl, and still kept budding
and blossoming, and daily putting on some new charm, which you no sooner
became sensible of than you thought it worth all she had previously
possessed. So unformed, vague, and without substance, as she had come to
us, it seemed as if we could see Nature shaping out a woman before our
very eyes, and yet had only a more reverential sense of the mystery of a
woman's soul and frame. Yesterday, her cheek was pale,--to-day it had
a bloom. Priscilla's smile, like a baby's first one, was a wondrous
novelty. Her imperfections and short-comings affected me with a kind of
playful pathos, which was as absolutely bewitching a sensation as ever I
experienced. After she had been a month or two at Blithedale, her animal
spirits waxed high, and kept her pretty constantly in a state of bubble
and ferment, impelling her to far more bodily activity than she had yet
strength to endure. She was very fond of playing with the other girls
out of doors. There is hardly another sight in the world so pretty as
that of a company of young girls, almost women grown, at play, and so
giving themselves up to their airy impulse that their tiptoes barely
touch the ground.
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