Chapter Three.

Chapter Three.Little Mrs Dorothy.“And the thousands come and goAll along the crowded street;But they give no ear to the things we know,And they pass with careless feet.For some hearts are hard with gold,And some are crushed in the throng,And some with the pleasures of life are cold—How long, O Lord, how long!”“If I am to begin at the beginning, my dears,” said little Mrs Dorothy, “I must tell you that I was born in a farmhouse, about a mile from Saint Albans, on the last day of the year of our Lord 1641; that my father was the Reverend William Jennings, brother to Sir Edward; and that my mother was Mrs Frances, daughter to Sir Jeremy Charlton.”“Whatever made your father take up with a parson’s life?” said Rhoda. “I wouldn’t be one for an apron full of money! Surely he was married first, wasn’t he?”“He was married first,” answered Mrs Dorothy; “and both his father and my mother’s kindred took it extreme ill that he should propose such views to himself,—the rather because he was of an easy fortune, his grandmother having left him some money.”“Would I have been a parson!” exclaimed Rhoda. “I’m too fond of jellies and conserves—nobody better.”“Well, my dear Mrs Rhoda, if you will have me say what I think,” resumed Mrs Dorothy.“You can if you like,” interjected Rhoda.“It does seem to me, and hath ever done so, that the common custom amongst us, which will have the chaplain to rise and withdraw when dessert is served, must be a relique of barbarous times.”Dessert at that time included pies, puddings, and jellies.“O Mrs Dorothy! you have the drollest notions!”And Rhoda went off in a long peal of laughter. The idea of any other arrangement struck her as very comical indeed.“Well, my dear,” said Mrs Dorothy, “I hope some day to see it otherwise.”“Oh, how droll it would be!” said Rhoda. “But go on, please, Mrs Dolly.”“Through those troublous times that followed on my birth,” resumed the old lady, “I was left for better safety with the farmer at whose house I was born; for my father had shortly after been made parson of a church in London, and ’twas not thought well that so young a child as I then was should be bred up in all the city tumults. My foster-father’s name was Lawrence Ingham; and he and his good wife were as father and mother to me.”“But what fashion of breeding could you get at a farmhouse?” demanded Rhoda, with a scornful pout.“Why, ’twas not there I learned French, child,” answered Mrs Dorothy, smiling; “but I learned to read, write, and cast accounts; to cook and distil, to conserve and pickle; with all manner of handiworks—sewing, knitting, broidery, and such like. And I can tell you, my dear, that in all the great world whereunto I afterwards entered I never saw better manners than in that farmhouse. I saw more ceremonies, sure; but not more courtesy and kindly thought for others.”“Why, I thought folks like that had no manners at all!” said Rhoda.“Then you were mightily mistaken, my dear. Farmer Ingham had two daughters, who were like sisters to me; but they were both older than I. Their names were Grace and Faith. ’Twas a very quiet, peaceful household. We rose with the sun in summer, and before it in winter—”“Catch me!” interpolated Rhoda.“And before any other thing might be done, there was reading and prayer in the farmhouse kitchen. All the farm servants trooped in, and took their places in order, the men on the right hand of the master, and the women on the left of the mistress. Then the farmer read a chapter, and afterwards prayed, all joining in ‘Our Father’ at the end.”“But—he wasn’t a parson?” demanded Rhoda, with a perplexed look.“Oh no, my dear.”“Then how could he pray?” said Rhoda. “He’d no business to read the Prayer-Book; and of course he couldn’t pray without it.”“Ah, then he made a mistake,” replied Mrs Dorothy very quietly. “He fancied he could.”“But who ever heard of such a thing?” said Rhoda.“We heard a good deal of it in those days, my dear. Why, child, the Common Prayer was forbid, even in the churches. Nobody used it, save a few here and there, that chose to run the risk of being found out and punished.”“How queer!” cried Rhoda. “Well, go on, Mrs Dolly. I hope the prayers weren’t long. I should have wanted my breakfast.”“They were usually about three parts of an hour.”“Ugh!” with a manufactured shudder, came from Rhoda.“After prayers, for an hour, each went to her calling. Commonly we took it turn about, the girls and I—one with the mistress in the kitchen, one with the maids in the chambers, and the third, if the weather was fine, a-weeding the posies in the garden, or, if wet, at her sewing in the parlour. Then the great bell was rung for breakfast, and we all gathered again in the kitchen. For breakfast were furmety, eggs, and butter, and milk, for the women; cold bakemeats and ale for the men.”“No tea?” asked Rhoda.“I was near ten years old, child, ere coffee came into England; and tea was some years later. The first coffee-house that ever was in this realm was set up at Oxford, of one Jacobs, a Jew; and about two years after was the first in London. For tea, ’twas said Queen Catherine brought it hither from Portingale; but in truth, I believe ’twas known among us somewhat sooner. But when it came in, for a long time none knew how to use it, except at the coffee-houses. I could tell you a droll tale of a neighbour of Farmer Ingham’s, that had a parcel of tea sent her as a great present from London, with a letter that said ’twas all the mode with the quality. And what did she, think you, but boiled it like cabbage, and bade all her neighbours come taste the new greens.”“Did they like them?” asked Rhoda, as well as she could speak for laughing.“I heard they all thought with their hostess, who said, ‘If those were quality greens, the quality were welcome to keep ’em; country folk would rather have cabbage and spinach any day.’”“Well!” said Rhoda, bridling a little, when her amusement had subsided; “’tis very silly for mean people to ape the quality.”“It is so, my dear,” replied Mrs Dorothy, with that extreme quietness which was the nearest her gentle spirit could come to irony. “’Tis silly for any to ape another, be he less or more.”“Why, there can be no communication between them,” observed Rhoda, with a toss of her head.“‘Communication,’ my dear,” said Mrs Dolly. “Yonder’s a new word. Where did you pick it up?”“O Mrs Dolly! you can’t be in the mode if you don’t pick up all the new words,” answered Rhoda more affectedly than ever. She was showing off now, and was entirely in her element.“And pray what are the other new words, my dear?” inquired Mrs Dorothy good-naturedly, and not without a little amusement. “That one sounds very much like the old-fashioned ‘commerce.’”“Well, I don’t know them all!” said Rhoda, with an assumption of humility; “but now-o’-days, when you speak of any one’s direction, you must sayadresse, from the French; and if one is out of spirits, you say he ishipped—that’s from hypochondriacal; and a crowd of people is amob—that’s short for mobile; and when a man goes about, and doesn’t want to be known, you say he isincog.—that means incognito, which is the Spanish for unknown. Then you say Mr Such-an-one spendsto the tune of fivehundred a year; and there are a lot of menof his kidney; andI bantered themwell about it. Oh, there are lots of new words, Mrs Dolly.”“So it seems, my dear. But are you sure incognito is Spanish?”“Oh, yes! William Knight told me so,” said Rhoda, with another toss of her head.“I imagined it was Latin,” observed Mrs Dorothy. “But ’tis true, I know nought of either tongue.”“Oh, William Knight knows everything,” said Rhoda, hyperbolically.“He must be a very ingenious young man,” quietly observed Mrs Dorothy.“Well, he is,” said Rhoda, scarcely perceiving the satire latent in Mrs Dorothy’s calm tones.“I am glad to hear it, my dear,” returned the old lady.“But he’s very uppish,—that’s pos.,” resumed the young one.“Really, my dear, you are full of new words,” said Mrs Dorothy, good-naturedly. “What means ‘pos.,’ pray you?”“Why, ‘positive,’” said Rhoda, laughing. “Andrep.means reputation, andfiremeans spirit, andsmartmeans sharp, and aconcertmeans a lot of people singing and playing on instruments of music, and anoperationmeans anything you do, and aspeculationmeans—well, it means—it means a speculation, you know.”“Dear, dear!” cried little Mrs Dorothy, holding up her hands. “I protest, my dear, I shall be drove to learn the English tongue anew if this mode go on.”“Well, Mrs Dolly, suppose your tale should go on?” suggested Rhoda. “Heyday! do you know what everybody is saying?—everybody that is anybody, you understand.”“I thought that everybody was somebody,” remarked Mrs Dorothy, with a comical set of the lips.“Oh dear, no!” said Rhoda. “There are ever so many people who are nobody.”“Indeed!” said Mrs Dorothy. “Well, child, what is everybody saying?”“Why, they say the Duke is not so well with the Queen as he has been. ’Tis thought, I assure you, by many above people.”“Is that one of the new words?” inquired Mrs Dorothy, with a little laugh. “Dear child, what mean you?—the angels?”“Oh, Mrs Dorothy, you are the oddest creature!” cried Rhoda. “Why, you know very well what I mean. Should you be sorry, Mrs Dolly, if the Duke became inconsiderable?”“No, my dear. Why should I?”“Well, I thought—” but Rhoda’s thought went no further.“You thought,” quietly continued the old lady, “that I had not had enow of town vanities, and would fain climb a few rungs up the ladder, holding on to folks’ skirts. Was that it, child?”“Well, I don’t know,” said Rhoda uneasily, for Mrs Dorothy had translated her thought into rather too plain language.“Ah, my dear, that is because you would love to climb a little yourself,” said Mrs Dorothy, smilingly, “and you apprehend no inconveniency from it. But, child, ’tis the weariest work in all the world—except it be climbing from earth to heaven. To climb on men’s ladders is mostly as a squirrel climbs in its cage,—round and round; you think yourself going vastly higher, but those that stand on the firm ground and watch you see that you do but go round. But to climb up Jacob’s ladder, whereof the Lord stands at the top, it will be other eyes that behold you climbing up, when in your own eyes you have not bettered yourself by a step. Climb as high as you will there, dear maids!—but never mind the ladders that go round. They are infinitely disappointing. I know it, for I have climbed them.”“Well, Mrs Dolly, do go on, now, and tell us all about it, there’s a good soul!” said Rhoda.Little Mrs Dorothy was executing some elaborate knitting. She went on with it for a few seconds in silence.“I was but sixteen,” she said, quietly, “when my mother came to visit me. I could not remember seeing her before: and very frighted was I of the grand gentlewoman, for so she seemed to me, that rustled into the farmhouse kitchen in silken brocade, and a velvet tippet on her neck. She was evenly disappointed with me. She thought me stiff and gloomy; and I thought her strange and full of vanities. ‘In three years’ time, Dolly,’ quoth she, ‘thou wilt be nineteen, and I will then have thee up to Town, and thou shalt see somewhat of the world. Thou art not ill-favoured,’ quoth she,—’twas my mother that said this, my dears,” modestly interpolated Mrs Dorothy,—“and I dare say thou wilt be the Town talk in a week. ’Tis pity there is no better world to have thee into!—and thy father as sour and Puritanical as any till of late, save the mark!—but there, ‘we must swim with the tide,’ saith she. ‘’Tis a long lane that has no turning.’ Ah me! but the lane had turned ere I was nineteen.”“Why, Mrs Dolly, the Restoration must have been that very year,” observed Rhoda.“That very year,” repeated Mrs Dorothy. “’Twas in April I quitted Farmer Ingham’s house, and was fetched up to London; and in May came the King in, and was shortly thereafter crowned.”“If it please you,” asked Phoebe, speaking for the first time of her own accord, “were you glad to go, Madam?”“Well, my dear, I was partly glad and partly sorry. I was sorrowful to take leave of mine old friends, little knowing if I should ever see them again or no; yet, like an untried maid, I was mightily set up with the thought of seeing London, and the lions, and Whitehall, and the like. Silly maid that I was! I had better have shed tears for the last than for the first.”“What thought you the finest thing in London?” said Rhoda. “But tell us, what thought you of London altogether?”“Why, the first thing I thought of was the size and the noise,” answered Mrs Dorothy. “It seemed to me such a great overgrown town, so different from Saint Albans; and so many carts and wheelbarrows always rattling over the stones; and so many folks in the streets; and all the strange cries of a morning. I thought my father a very strange, cold man, of whom I was no little afraid; and my mother was sadly disappointed that I did not roll my eyes, and had not been taught to dance.”“Why did they ever leave you at a farmhouse?” inquired Rhoda, rather scornfully.“Icannot entirely say, my dear; but I think that was mainly my father’s doing. My poor father!”And Mrs Dorothy’s handkerchief was hastily passed across her eyes.“The first night I came,” she said, “my mother had a large assembly in her withdrawing-chamber. There were smart-dressed ladies fluttering of their fans, and gentlemen in all the colours of the rainbow; and I, foolish maid! right well pleased when one and another commended my country complexion, or told me something about my fine eyes: when all at once came a heavy hand on my shoulder, and my father saith, ‘Dorothy, I would speak with you.’ I followed him forth, not a little trembling lest he should be about to chide me; but he led me into his own closet, and shut the door. He bade me sit, and leaning over the fire himself, he said nought for a moment. Then saith he, ‘Dorothy, you heard Mr Debenham speak to you?’ ‘Yes, Sir,’ quoth I. ‘And what said he, child?’ goes on my father, gently. I was something loth to repeat what he had said; for it was what I, in my foolish heart, thought a very fine speech about Mrs Doll’s fine eyes, that glistered like stars. Howbeit, my father waited quiet enough; and having been well bred to obey by Farmer Ingham, I brought it out at last. ‘Did you believe it, Dorothy?’ saith my father. ‘Did you think he meant it?’ I did but whisper, ‘Yes, Sir,’ for I could not but feel very much ashamed. ‘Then, Dorothy,’ saith he, ‘the first lesson you will do well to learn in London is that men and women do not always mean it when they flatter you. And he does not. Ah!’ saith my father, fetching a great sigh,—‘’tis easy work for fathers to say such things, but not so for maidens to believe them. There is one other thing I would have you learn, Dorothy.’ ‘Yes, Sir,’ quoth I, when he stayed. He turned him around, and looked in my face with his dark eyes, that seemed to burn into me, and he saith, ‘Learn this, Dorothy,—that ’tis the easiest thing in all the world for a man to drift away from God. Ay, or a woman either. You may do it, and never know that you have done it,—for a while, at least. David was two full years ere he found it out. Oh Dorothy, take warning! I was once as innocent as you are. I have drifted from God, oh my child, how far! The Lord keep you from a like fate.’ I was fairly affrighted, for his face was terrible. An hour after, I saw him dealing the cards at ombre, with a look as bright and mirthful as though he knew not grief but by name.”Phoebe looked up with eyes full of meaning. “Did he never come back?”“Dear child,” said Mrs Dorothy, turning to her, “hast thou forgot that the Good Shepherd goeth after that which was lost, until He find it? He came back, my dear. But it was through the Great Plague and the Great Fire.”It was evident for a few minutes that Mrs Dorothy was wrestling with painful memories.“Well, and what then?” said Rhoda, who wanted the story to go on, and was afraid of what she called preaching.“Well!” resumed the old lady, more lightly, “then, for three days in the week I had a dancing-master come to teach me; and twice in the week a music-master; and all manner of new gowns, and my hair dressed in a multitude of curls; and my mother’s maid to teach me French, and see that I carried myself well. And when this had gone on a while, my mother began to carry me a-visiting when she went to see her friends. For above a year she used a hackney coach; but then my father was made Doctor, and had a great church given him that was then all the mode; and my Lady Jennings came up to Town, and finding he had parts, she began to take note of him, and would carry him in her coach to the Court; and my mother would then set up her own coach, the which she did. And at length, the summer before I was one-and-twenty, my Lady Jennings, without the privity of my father, offered my mother to have me a maid to one of the Ladies in Waiting on the Queen. From this place, said she, if I played my cards well, and was liked of them above me, I might come in time to be a Maid of Honour.”“O rare!” exclaimed Rhoda. “And did you, Mrs Dolly?”“Yes, child,” slowly answered Mrs Dorothy. “I did so.”Rhoda’s face was sparkling with interest and pleasure. Phoebe’s was shadowed with forebodings, of a sad end to come.“The night ere I left home for the Court,” pursued the old lady, “my mother held long converse with me. ‘Thou art mightily improved, Dolly,’ saith she, ‘since thy coming to London; but there is yet a stiff soberness about thee, that thou wilt do well to be rid of. Thou shouldst have more ease, child. Do but look at thy cousin Jenny, that is three years younger than thou, and yet how will she rattle to every man that hath a word of compliment to pay her!’ But after she had made an end, my father called me into his closet. ‘Poor Dorothy!’ he said. ‘The bloom is not all off the peach yet. But ’tis going, child—’tis fast going. I feared this. Poor Dorothy!’”“Oh, dear!” said Rhoda. “You were not going to a funeral, Mrs Dolly!”“Ah, child! maybe, if I had, it had been the better for me. The wise man saith, ‘It is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting.’”“But pray, what harm came to you, Mrs Dorothy?”“No outward bodily harm at all, my dear. Yet even that was no thanks to me. It was ‘of the Lord’s compassion,’ seeing He had a purpose of mercy toward me. But, ah me! what inward and spiritual harm! Mrs Rhoda, my dear, I saw sights and heard sayings those two years I dwelt in the Court which I would give the world, so to speak, only to forget them now.”“What were they, Mrs Dorothy?” asked Rhoda, eagerly sitting up.“Think you I am likely to tell you, child? No, indeed!”“But what sort of harm did they to you, Mrs Dolly?”“Child, I learned to think lightly of sin. People did not talk of sin there at all; the words they used were crime and vice. Every wrong doing was looked on as it affected other men: if it touched your neighbour’s purse or person, it was ill; if it only grieved his heart, then ’twas a little matter. But how it touched God was never so much as thought on. There might have been no God in Heaven, so little account was taken of Him there.”“Now do tell us. Mrs Dolly, what the Queen was like, and the King,” said Rhoda, yawning. “And how many Maids of Honour were there? Just tell us all about it.”“There were six,” replied the old lady, taking up her knitting, which she had dropped in her earnestness a minute before. “And Mrs Sanderson was their mother. I reckon you will scarce know that always a married gentlewoman goeth about with these young damsels, called the Mother of the Maids, whose work it is to see after them.”“And keep them from everything jolly!” exclaimed Rhoda. “Now, that’s a shame! Wouldn’t it be fun to bamboozle that creature? I protest I should enjoy it!”“O Mrs Rhoda! Mrs Rhoda!”“I should, of all things, Mrs Dolly! But now, what were the King and Queen like? Was she very beautiful?”(Note: Charles the Second and Catherine of Braganza.)“No,” said Mrs Dorothy, “she was not. She had pretty feet, fine eyes, and very lovely hair. ’Twas rich brown on the top of her head, and descending downward it grew into jet black. For the rest, she was but tolerable. In truth, her teeth wronged her by sticking too far out of her mouth; but for that she would have been lovelier by much.”“Horrid!” said Rhoda. “I forget where she came from, Mrs Dolly?”“She came from Portingale, my dear, being daughter to the King of that country, and her name was Catherine.”“And what was the King like?”“When he was little, my dear, his mother, Queen Mary, used to say he was so ugly a baby that she was quite ashamed of him. He was better-favoured when he grew a man; he had good eyes, but a large Mouth.”(Note: Queen Mary was Henrietta Maria, always termed Queen Mary during her own reign.)“He was a black man, was he not?”By which term Rhoda meant what we now call a dark man.“Yes, very black and swarthy.”“Where did he commonly live?”“Mostly at Whitehall or Saint James’s. At times he went to Hampton Court, and often, for a change of sir, to Newmarket; now and then to Tunbridge Wells. He was but little at Windsor.”“Did you like him, Mrs Dorothy?”Phoebe looked up, when no answer came. The expression of Mrs Dorothy’s face was a curious mixture of fear, repulsion, and yet amusement.“No!” she said at length.“Why not?” demanded Rhoda.“Well, there were some that did,” was the reply, in a rather constrained tone; “and the one that he behaved the worst to loved him the best of all.”“How droll!” said Rhoda. “And who were your friends, then, Mrs Dorothy?”“That depends, my dear, on what you mean by friends. If you mean them that flattered me, and joked with me, and the like,—why, I had very many; or if you mean them that would take some trouble to push me in the world,—well, there were several of those; but if you mean such as are only true friends, that would have cast one thought to my real welfare, whether I should go to Heaven or Hell,—I had but one of that sort.”“And who was your one friend, Mrs Dolly?” asked Rhoda, pursing up her lips a little.“The King’s Scots cook, my dear,” quietly replied Mrs Dorothy.“Thewhat?” shrieked Rhoda, going into convulsions of laughter.“Ah, you may laugh, Mrs Rhoda. You know there’s an old saying, ‘Let them laugh that win.’ If ever an old sinner like me enters the gates of Heaven, so far as the human means are concerned, I shall owe it, first of all, to old David Armstrong.”“Will you please to tell us about him, Madam?” rather timidly asked Phoebe.“With all my heart, my dear. Dear old Davie! Methinks I see him now. Picture to yourselves, my dears, a short man, something stooping in the shoulders, with sharp features and iron-grey hair; always dressed in his white cooking garb, and a white cap over his frizzled locks. But before I tell you what I knew of old Davie, methinks I had better tell you a tale of him that will give you some diversion, without I mistake.”“Oh do, Mrs Dolly?” cried Rhoda, who feared nothing so much as too great seriousness in her friend’s stones.“Well,” said Mrs Dorothy, “then you must know, my dears, that once upon a time the King and Queen were at dinner, and with them, amongst others, my Lord Rochester, who was at that time a very wild gallant. He died, indeed, very penitent, and, I trust, a saved man; but let that be. They were sat after dinner, and my Lord Rochester passes the bottle about to his next neighbour. ‘Come, man!’ saith the King, in his rollicksome way, ‘take a glass of that which cheereth God and man, as Scripture saith.’ My Lord Rochester at once bets the King forty pound that there was no such saying in Scripture. The King referreth all to the Queen’s chaplain, that happened to be the only parson then present; but saith again, that though he could not name the place, yet he was as certain to have read it in Scripture as that his name was Charles, ‘What thinks your Majesty?’ quoth my Lord Rochester, turning to the Queen. She, very modestly—”“But, Mrs Dolly, was not the Queen a Papist? What would she know about the Bible?”“So she was, my dear. But they have a Bible of their own, that they allow the reading of to certain persons. And I dare say she was one. However, my Lord Rochester asked her, for I heard him; and she said, very womanly, that she was unfit to decide such matters, but she could not think there to be any such passage in the Bible.”“Why, there isn’t!” rashly interpolated Rhoda.Mrs Dorothy smiled, but did not contradict her.“Then up spoke the Queen’s chaplain, and gave his voice like his mistress, that there was no such passage; and several others of them at the table said they thought the like. So the King, swearing his wonted oath, cried out for some to bring a Bible, that he might search and see.”“O Mrs Dolly! what was his favourite oath?”“I do not see, my dear, that it would do you any good to know it. Well, the Bible, as matters went, was not to be had. King, Queen, chaplain, and courtiers, there was not a man nor woman at the table that owned to possessing a Bible.”“How shocking!” said Phoebe, under her breath.“Very shocking, my dear,” assented Mrs Dorothy. “But all at once my Lord Rochester cries out, ‘Please your Majesty, I’ll lay you forty shillings there’s one man in this palace that has a Bible! He cut me short for swearing in the yard a month since. That’s old David, your Majesty’s Scots cook. If you’ll send for him—’ ‘Done!’ says the King. ‘Killigrew, root out old Davie, and tell him to come here, and bring his Bible with him.’ So away went Mr Killigrew, the King’s favourite page; and ere long back he comes, and old Davie with him, and under Davie’s arm a great brown book. ‘Here he is, Sire, Bible and all!’ says Mr Killigrew. ‘Come forward, Davie, and be hanged!’ says the King. ‘I’ll come forward, Sire, at your Majesty’s bidding,’ says Davie, ‘and gin ye order it, and I ha’e deservit it, I can be hangit,’ saith he, mighty dry; ’but under your Majesty’s pleasure I’ll just tak’ the liberty to ask, Sire, what are ye wantin’ wi’ the Buik?”“Oh, how queer you talk, Mrs Dolly!”“As David talked, my dear. He was a Scot, you know. Well, the King gave a hearty laugh; and says he, ‘Oh, come forward, Davie, and fear nothing. We’ll not hang you, and we want no hurt to your darling book.’ ‘Atweel, Sire,’ says Davie, ‘and I’d ha’e been gey sorry gin ye had meant to hurt my buik, seein’ it was my mither’s, and I set store by it for her sake; but trust me, Sire, I’d ha’e been a hantle sorrier gin ye had meant onie disrespect to the Lord’s Buik. I’ll no stand by, wi’ a’ honour to your Majesty, an’ see I lichtlied.’”“What does that mean, Mrs Dolly?”“Set light by, my dear. Well, the King laughed again, but I think Davie’s words a little sobered him, for he spoke kindly enough, that no harm should be done, nor was any disrespect intended; ‘but,’ saith he, ‘my Lord Rochester and I fell a-disputing if certain words were in the Bible or no; and as you are the only man here like to have one, I sent for you.’ Davie looks, quiet enough, round all the table; and he says, under his breath, ‘The only man here like to have a Bible! Ay, your Majesty, I ken weel eneuch that I ha’e my habitation among the tents o’ Kedar. Atweel, Sire, an’ I’ll be pleasit to answer onie sic question, gin ye please to tell me the words.’ My Lord Rochester saith, ‘“Wine, which cheereth God and man.” Are such words as those in the Bible, David?’ Neither yea nor nay said old Davie: but he turned over the leaves of his Bible for a moment, and then, clearing his voice, and first doffing his cook’s cap (which he had but lifted a minute for the King), he read from the Book of Judges, Jotham’s parable of the trees. ’Twas a little while ere any spoke: then said the Queen’s chaplain, swearing a great oath, that he could not but be infinitely surprised to find there to be such words in the Bible.”“O Mrs Dolly! a parson to swear!”“There are different sorts of parsons, my dear. But old David thought it shocking, for he turns round to the chaplain, and saith he, ‘Your pardon, Mr Howard, but gin ye’d give me leave, I’d be pleasit to swear the neist oath for ye. It would sound rather better, ye ken, for a cook than a chaplain.’ ‘Hurrah!’ says the King, swearing himself, ‘the sprightliest humour I heard of a long time! Pray you, silence, and hear old Davie swear!’ ‘I see nothing to swear anent the now, an’ it please your Majesty,’ says Davie, mighty dry again: ‘when I do, your Majesty’ll be sure to hear it.’ The King laughed heartily, for he took Davie right enough, though I saw some look puzzled. Of course he never would see reason to do a sinful thing. But a new thought had come into the King’s head, and he turns quick to Mr Howard, and desires that he would give exposition of the words that Davie had read. ‘You ought to know what they mean, if we don’t, poor sinners,’ saith the King. ‘I protest, Sire,’ saith the chaplain, ‘that I cannot so much as guess what they mean.’ ‘Now then, David the divine,’ cries my Lord Rochester, ‘your exposition, if you please.’ And some of the courtiers, that by this time were not too sober, drummed on the table with glasses, and shouted for David’s sermon.”“I think, Mrs Dolly, that was scarce proper, in the King’s and Queen’s presence.”“So I think, my dear. But King Charles’s Court was Liberty Hall, and every man did that which was right in his own eyes. But Davie stood very quiet, with the Bible yet open in his hands. He waited his master’s bidding, if they did not. ‘Oh ay, go on, Davie,’ saith the King, leaning back in his chair and laughing. ‘Silence for Mr David Armstrong’s sermon!’ cries my Lord Rochester, in a voice of a master of ceremonies. But Davie took no note of any voice but the King’s, though ’twas to my Lord Rochester he addressed him when he spoke. ‘That wine cheereth man, your Lordship very well knows,’ quoth Davie, in his dry way: and seeing his Lordship had drank a bottle and a half since he sat down, I should think he did, my dears. ‘But this, that wine cheereth God, is referable to the drink-offering commanded by God of the Jews, wherein the wine doth seem to typify the precious blood of Christ, and the thankfulness of him that hath his iniquity thereby purged away. For in the fifteenth chapter of the Book of Numbers you shall find this drink-offering termed “a sweet savour unto the Lord.” And since nothing but Christ is a sweet savour unto God, therefore we judge that the wine of the drink-offering, like to that of the Sacrament, did denote the blood of Christ whereby we are redeemed; the one prefiguring that whereto it looked forward, as the other doth likewise figure that whereunto it looketh back. This, therefore, that wine cheereth God, is to be understood by an emblem, of the blood of Christ, our Mediator; for through this means God is well pleased in the way of salvation that He hath appointed, whereby His justice is satisfied. His law fulfilled, His mercy reigneth, His grace doth triumph, all His perfections do agree together, the sinner is saved, and God in Christ glorified. Now, Sire, I have done your bidding, and I humbly ask your Majesty’s leave to withdraw.’ The King said naught, but cast him a nod of consent. My dears, you never saw such a change as had come over that table. Every man seemed sobered and awed. The Queen was weeping, the King silent and thoughtful. My Lord Rochester, whom at that time nothing could sober long, was the only one to speak, and rising with make-believe gravity, as though in his place in the House of Lords, he offered a motion that the King should please to send Mr Howard into the kitchen to make kail, and raise the Reverend Mr David Armstrong to the place of chaplain.”“What is kail, Mrs Dolly?” asked Rhoda, laughing.“’Tis Scots broth, my dear, whereof King Charles was very fond, and old David had been fetched from Scotland on purpose to make it for him.”“What a droll old man!” exclaimed Rhoda.“Ah, he was one of the best men ever I knew,” said Mrs Dorothy. “But, my dear, look at the clock!”“I declare!” cried Rhoda. “Phoebe, we have but just time to run home ere supper, if so much as that. Good evening, Mrs Dolly, and thank you. What will Madam say?”Note: David Armstrong is a historical person, and this anecdote is true. The surname given to him only is fictitious, as history does not record any name but “David.”

“And the thousands come and goAll along the crowded street;But they give no ear to the things we know,And they pass with careless feet.For some hearts are hard with gold,And some are crushed in the throng,And some with the pleasures of life are cold—How long, O Lord, how long!”

“And the thousands come and goAll along the crowded street;But they give no ear to the things we know,And they pass with careless feet.For some hearts are hard with gold,And some are crushed in the throng,And some with the pleasures of life are cold—How long, O Lord, how long!”

“If I am to begin at the beginning, my dears,” said little Mrs Dorothy, “I must tell you that I was born in a farmhouse, about a mile from Saint Albans, on the last day of the year of our Lord 1641; that my father was the Reverend William Jennings, brother to Sir Edward; and that my mother was Mrs Frances, daughter to Sir Jeremy Charlton.”

“Whatever made your father take up with a parson’s life?” said Rhoda. “I wouldn’t be one for an apron full of money! Surely he was married first, wasn’t he?”

“He was married first,” answered Mrs Dorothy; “and both his father and my mother’s kindred took it extreme ill that he should propose such views to himself,—the rather because he was of an easy fortune, his grandmother having left him some money.”

“Would I have been a parson!” exclaimed Rhoda. “I’m too fond of jellies and conserves—nobody better.”

“Well, my dear Mrs Rhoda, if you will have me say what I think,” resumed Mrs Dorothy.

“You can if you like,” interjected Rhoda.

“It does seem to me, and hath ever done so, that the common custom amongst us, which will have the chaplain to rise and withdraw when dessert is served, must be a relique of barbarous times.”

Dessert at that time included pies, puddings, and jellies.

“O Mrs Dorothy! you have the drollest notions!”

And Rhoda went off in a long peal of laughter. The idea of any other arrangement struck her as very comical indeed.

“Well, my dear,” said Mrs Dorothy, “I hope some day to see it otherwise.”

“Oh, how droll it would be!” said Rhoda. “But go on, please, Mrs Dolly.”

“Through those troublous times that followed on my birth,” resumed the old lady, “I was left for better safety with the farmer at whose house I was born; for my father had shortly after been made parson of a church in London, and ’twas not thought well that so young a child as I then was should be bred up in all the city tumults. My foster-father’s name was Lawrence Ingham; and he and his good wife were as father and mother to me.”

“But what fashion of breeding could you get at a farmhouse?” demanded Rhoda, with a scornful pout.

“Why, ’twas not there I learned French, child,” answered Mrs Dorothy, smiling; “but I learned to read, write, and cast accounts; to cook and distil, to conserve and pickle; with all manner of handiworks—sewing, knitting, broidery, and such like. And I can tell you, my dear, that in all the great world whereunto I afterwards entered I never saw better manners than in that farmhouse. I saw more ceremonies, sure; but not more courtesy and kindly thought for others.”

“Why, I thought folks like that had no manners at all!” said Rhoda.

“Then you were mightily mistaken, my dear. Farmer Ingham had two daughters, who were like sisters to me; but they were both older than I. Their names were Grace and Faith. ’Twas a very quiet, peaceful household. We rose with the sun in summer, and before it in winter—”

“Catch me!” interpolated Rhoda.

“And before any other thing might be done, there was reading and prayer in the farmhouse kitchen. All the farm servants trooped in, and took their places in order, the men on the right hand of the master, and the women on the left of the mistress. Then the farmer read a chapter, and afterwards prayed, all joining in ‘Our Father’ at the end.”

“But—he wasn’t a parson?” demanded Rhoda, with a perplexed look.

“Oh no, my dear.”

“Then how could he pray?” said Rhoda. “He’d no business to read the Prayer-Book; and of course he couldn’t pray without it.”

“Ah, then he made a mistake,” replied Mrs Dorothy very quietly. “He fancied he could.”

“But who ever heard of such a thing?” said Rhoda.

“We heard a good deal of it in those days, my dear. Why, child, the Common Prayer was forbid, even in the churches. Nobody used it, save a few here and there, that chose to run the risk of being found out and punished.”

“How queer!” cried Rhoda. “Well, go on, Mrs Dolly. I hope the prayers weren’t long. I should have wanted my breakfast.”

“They were usually about three parts of an hour.”

“Ugh!” with a manufactured shudder, came from Rhoda.

“After prayers, for an hour, each went to her calling. Commonly we took it turn about, the girls and I—one with the mistress in the kitchen, one with the maids in the chambers, and the third, if the weather was fine, a-weeding the posies in the garden, or, if wet, at her sewing in the parlour. Then the great bell was rung for breakfast, and we all gathered again in the kitchen. For breakfast were furmety, eggs, and butter, and milk, for the women; cold bakemeats and ale for the men.”

“No tea?” asked Rhoda.

“I was near ten years old, child, ere coffee came into England; and tea was some years later. The first coffee-house that ever was in this realm was set up at Oxford, of one Jacobs, a Jew; and about two years after was the first in London. For tea, ’twas said Queen Catherine brought it hither from Portingale; but in truth, I believe ’twas known among us somewhat sooner. But when it came in, for a long time none knew how to use it, except at the coffee-houses. I could tell you a droll tale of a neighbour of Farmer Ingham’s, that had a parcel of tea sent her as a great present from London, with a letter that said ’twas all the mode with the quality. And what did she, think you, but boiled it like cabbage, and bade all her neighbours come taste the new greens.”

“Did they like them?” asked Rhoda, as well as she could speak for laughing.

“I heard they all thought with their hostess, who said, ‘If those were quality greens, the quality were welcome to keep ’em; country folk would rather have cabbage and spinach any day.’”

“Well!” said Rhoda, bridling a little, when her amusement had subsided; “’tis very silly for mean people to ape the quality.”

“It is so, my dear,” replied Mrs Dorothy, with that extreme quietness which was the nearest her gentle spirit could come to irony. “’Tis silly for any to ape another, be he less or more.”

“Why, there can be no communication between them,” observed Rhoda, with a toss of her head.

“‘Communication,’ my dear,” said Mrs Dolly. “Yonder’s a new word. Where did you pick it up?”

“O Mrs Dolly! you can’t be in the mode if you don’t pick up all the new words,” answered Rhoda more affectedly than ever. She was showing off now, and was entirely in her element.

“And pray what are the other new words, my dear?” inquired Mrs Dorothy good-naturedly, and not without a little amusement. “That one sounds very much like the old-fashioned ‘commerce.’”

“Well, I don’t know them all!” said Rhoda, with an assumption of humility; “but now-o’-days, when you speak of any one’s direction, you must sayadresse, from the French; and if one is out of spirits, you say he ishipped—that’s from hypochondriacal; and a crowd of people is amob—that’s short for mobile; and when a man goes about, and doesn’t want to be known, you say he isincog.—that means incognito, which is the Spanish for unknown. Then you say Mr Such-an-one spendsto the tune of fivehundred a year; and there are a lot of menof his kidney; andI bantered themwell about it. Oh, there are lots of new words, Mrs Dolly.”

“So it seems, my dear. But are you sure incognito is Spanish?”

“Oh, yes! William Knight told me so,” said Rhoda, with another toss of her head.

“I imagined it was Latin,” observed Mrs Dorothy. “But ’tis true, I know nought of either tongue.”

“Oh, William Knight knows everything,” said Rhoda, hyperbolically.

“He must be a very ingenious young man,” quietly observed Mrs Dorothy.

“Well, he is,” said Rhoda, scarcely perceiving the satire latent in Mrs Dorothy’s calm tones.

“I am glad to hear it, my dear,” returned the old lady.

“But he’s very uppish,—that’s pos.,” resumed the young one.

“Really, my dear, you are full of new words,” said Mrs Dorothy, good-naturedly. “What means ‘pos.,’ pray you?”

“Why, ‘positive,’” said Rhoda, laughing. “Andrep.means reputation, andfiremeans spirit, andsmartmeans sharp, and aconcertmeans a lot of people singing and playing on instruments of music, and anoperationmeans anything you do, and aspeculationmeans—well, it means—it means a speculation, you know.”

“Dear, dear!” cried little Mrs Dorothy, holding up her hands. “I protest, my dear, I shall be drove to learn the English tongue anew if this mode go on.”

“Well, Mrs Dolly, suppose your tale should go on?” suggested Rhoda. “Heyday! do you know what everybody is saying?—everybody that is anybody, you understand.”

“I thought that everybody was somebody,” remarked Mrs Dorothy, with a comical set of the lips.

“Oh dear, no!” said Rhoda. “There are ever so many people who are nobody.”

“Indeed!” said Mrs Dorothy. “Well, child, what is everybody saying?”

“Why, they say the Duke is not so well with the Queen as he has been. ’Tis thought, I assure you, by many above people.”

“Is that one of the new words?” inquired Mrs Dorothy, with a little laugh. “Dear child, what mean you?—the angels?”

“Oh, Mrs Dorothy, you are the oddest creature!” cried Rhoda. “Why, you know very well what I mean. Should you be sorry, Mrs Dolly, if the Duke became inconsiderable?”

“No, my dear. Why should I?”

“Well, I thought—” but Rhoda’s thought went no further.

“You thought,” quietly continued the old lady, “that I had not had enow of town vanities, and would fain climb a few rungs up the ladder, holding on to folks’ skirts. Was that it, child?”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Rhoda uneasily, for Mrs Dorothy had translated her thought into rather too plain language.

“Ah, my dear, that is because you would love to climb a little yourself,” said Mrs Dorothy, smilingly, “and you apprehend no inconveniency from it. But, child, ’tis the weariest work in all the world—except it be climbing from earth to heaven. To climb on men’s ladders is mostly as a squirrel climbs in its cage,—round and round; you think yourself going vastly higher, but those that stand on the firm ground and watch you see that you do but go round. But to climb up Jacob’s ladder, whereof the Lord stands at the top, it will be other eyes that behold you climbing up, when in your own eyes you have not bettered yourself by a step. Climb as high as you will there, dear maids!—but never mind the ladders that go round. They are infinitely disappointing. I know it, for I have climbed them.”

“Well, Mrs Dolly, do go on, now, and tell us all about it, there’s a good soul!” said Rhoda.

Little Mrs Dorothy was executing some elaborate knitting. She went on with it for a few seconds in silence.

“I was but sixteen,” she said, quietly, “when my mother came to visit me. I could not remember seeing her before: and very frighted was I of the grand gentlewoman, for so she seemed to me, that rustled into the farmhouse kitchen in silken brocade, and a velvet tippet on her neck. She was evenly disappointed with me. She thought me stiff and gloomy; and I thought her strange and full of vanities. ‘In three years’ time, Dolly,’ quoth she, ‘thou wilt be nineteen, and I will then have thee up to Town, and thou shalt see somewhat of the world. Thou art not ill-favoured,’ quoth she,—’twas my mother that said this, my dears,” modestly interpolated Mrs Dorothy,—“and I dare say thou wilt be the Town talk in a week. ’Tis pity there is no better world to have thee into!—and thy father as sour and Puritanical as any till of late, save the mark!—but there, ‘we must swim with the tide,’ saith she. ‘’Tis a long lane that has no turning.’ Ah me! but the lane had turned ere I was nineteen.”

“Why, Mrs Dolly, the Restoration must have been that very year,” observed Rhoda.

“That very year,” repeated Mrs Dorothy. “’Twas in April I quitted Farmer Ingham’s house, and was fetched up to London; and in May came the King in, and was shortly thereafter crowned.”

“If it please you,” asked Phoebe, speaking for the first time of her own accord, “were you glad to go, Madam?”

“Well, my dear, I was partly glad and partly sorry. I was sorrowful to take leave of mine old friends, little knowing if I should ever see them again or no; yet, like an untried maid, I was mightily set up with the thought of seeing London, and the lions, and Whitehall, and the like. Silly maid that I was! I had better have shed tears for the last than for the first.”

“What thought you the finest thing in London?” said Rhoda. “But tell us, what thought you of London altogether?”

“Why, the first thing I thought of was the size and the noise,” answered Mrs Dorothy. “It seemed to me such a great overgrown town, so different from Saint Albans; and so many carts and wheelbarrows always rattling over the stones; and so many folks in the streets; and all the strange cries of a morning. I thought my father a very strange, cold man, of whom I was no little afraid; and my mother was sadly disappointed that I did not roll my eyes, and had not been taught to dance.”

“Why did they ever leave you at a farmhouse?” inquired Rhoda, rather scornfully.

“Icannot entirely say, my dear; but I think that was mainly my father’s doing. My poor father!”

And Mrs Dorothy’s handkerchief was hastily passed across her eyes.

“The first night I came,” she said, “my mother had a large assembly in her withdrawing-chamber. There were smart-dressed ladies fluttering of their fans, and gentlemen in all the colours of the rainbow; and I, foolish maid! right well pleased when one and another commended my country complexion, or told me something about my fine eyes: when all at once came a heavy hand on my shoulder, and my father saith, ‘Dorothy, I would speak with you.’ I followed him forth, not a little trembling lest he should be about to chide me; but he led me into his own closet, and shut the door. He bade me sit, and leaning over the fire himself, he said nought for a moment. Then saith he, ‘Dorothy, you heard Mr Debenham speak to you?’ ‘Yes, Sir,’ quoth I. ‘And what said he, child?’ goes on my father, gently. I was something loth to repeat what he had said; for it was what I, in my foolish heart, thought a very fine speech about Mrs Doll’s fine eyes, that glistered like stars. Howbeit, my father waited quiet enough; and having been well bred to obey by Farmer Ingham, I brought it out at last. ‘Did you believe it, Dorothy?’ saith my father. ‘Did you think he meant it?’ I did but whisper, ‘Yes, Sir,’ for I could not but feel very much ashamed. ‘Then, Dorothy,’ saith he, ‘the first lesson you will do well to learn in London is that men and women do not always mean it when they flatter you. And he does not. Ah!’ saith my father, fetching a great sigh,—‘’tis easy work for fathers to say such things, but not so for maidens to believe them. There is one other thing I would have you learn, Dorothy.’ ‘Yes, Sir,’ quoth I, when he stayed. He turned him around, and looked in my face with his dark eyes, that seemed to burn into me, and he saith, ‘Learn this, Dorothy,—that ’tis the easiest thing in all the world for a man to drift away from God. Ay, or a woman either. You may do it, and never know that you have done it,—for a while, at least. David was two full years ere he found it out. Oh Dorothy, take warning! I was once as innocent as you are. I have drifted from God, oh my child, how far! The Lord keep you from a like fate.’ I was fairly affrighted, for his face was terrible. An hour after, I saw him dealing the cards at ombre, with a look as bright and mirthful as though he knew not grief but by name.”

Phoebe looked up with eyes full of meaning. “Did he never come back?”

“Dear child,” said Mrs Dorothy, turning to her, “hast thou forgot that the Good Shepherd goeth after that which was lost, until He find it? He came back, my dear. But it was through the Great Plague and the Great Fire.”

It was evident for a few minutes that Mrs Dorothy was wrestling with painful memories.

“Well, and what then?” said Rhoda, who wanted the story to go on, and was afraid of what she called preaching.

“Well!” resumed the old lady, more lightly, “then, for three days in the week I had a dancing-master come to teach me; and twice in the week a music-master; and all manner of new gowns, and my hair dressed in a multitude of curls; and my mother’s maid to teach me French, and see that I carried myself well. And when this had gone on a while, my mother began to carry me a-visiting when she went to see her friends. For above a year she used a hackney coach; but then my father was made Doctor, and had a great church given him that was then all the mode; and my Lady Jennings came up to Town, and finding he had parts, she began to take note of him, and would carry him in her coach to the Court; and my mother would then set up her own coach, the which she did. And at length, the summer before I was one-and-twenty, my Lady Jennings, without the privity of my father, offered my mother to have me a maid to one of the Ladies in Waiting on the Queen. From this place, said she, if I played my cards well, and was liked of them above me, I might come in time to be a Maid of Honour.”

“O rare!” exclaimed Rhoda. “And did you, Mrs Dolly?”

“Yes, child,” slowly answered Mrs Dorothy. “I did so.”

Rhoda’s face was sparkling with interest and pleasure. Phoebe’s was shadowed with forebodings, of a sad end to come.

“The night ere I left home for the Court,” pursued the old lady, “my mother held long converse with me. ‘Thou art mightily improved, Dolly,’ saith she, ‘since thy coming to London; but there is yet a stiff soberness about thee, that thou wilt do well to be rid of. Thou shouldst have more ease, child. Do but look at thy cousin Jenny, that is three years younger than thou, and yet how will she rattle to every man that hath a word of compliment to pay her!’ But after she had made an end, my father called me into his closet. ‘Poor Dorothy!’ he said. ‘The bloom is not all off the peach yet. But ’tis going, child—’tis fast going. I feared this. Poor Dorothy!’”

“Oh, dear!” said Rhoda. “You were not going to a funeral, Mrs Dolly!”

“Ah, child! maybe, if I had, it had been the better for me. The wise man saith, ‘It is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting.’”

“But pray, what harm came to you, Mrs Dorothy?”

“No outward bodily harm at all, my dear. Yet even that was no thanks to me. It was ‘of the Lord’s compassion,’ seeing He had a purpose of mercy toward me. But, ah me! what inward and spiritual harm! Mrs Rhoda, my dear, I saw sights and heard sayings those two years I dwelt in the Court which I would give the world, so to speak, only to forget them now.”

“What were they, Mrs Dorothy?” asked Rhoda, eagerly sitting up.

“Think you I am likely to tell you, child? No, indeed!”

“But what sort of harm did they to you, Mrs Dolly?”

“Child, I learned to think lightly of sin. People did not talk of sin there at all; the words they used were crime and vice. Every wrong doing was looked on as it affected other men: if it touched your neighbour’s purse or person, it was ill; if it only grieved his heart, then ’twas a little matter. But how it touched God was never so much as thought on. There might have been no God in Heaven, so little account was taken of Him there.”

“Now do tell us. Mrs Dolly, what the Queen was like, and the King,” said Rhoda, yawning. “And how many Maids of Honour were there? Just tell us all about it.”

“There were six,” replied the old lady, taking up her knitting, which she had dropped in her earnestness a minute before. “And Mrs Sanderson was their mother. I reckon you will scarce know that always a married gentlewoman goeth about with these young damsels, called the Mother of the Maids, whose work it is to see after them.”

“And keep them from everything jolly!” exclaimed Rhoda. “Now, that’s a shame! Wouldn’t it be fun to bamboozle that creature? I protest I should enjoy it!”

“O Mrs Rhoda! Mrs Rhoda!”

“I should, of all things, Mrs Dolly! But now, what were the King and Queen like? Was she very beautiful?”

(Note: Charles the Second and Catherine of Braganza.)

“No,” said Mrs Dorothy, “she was not. She had pretty feet, fine eyes, and very lovely hair. ’Twas rich brown on the top of her head, and descending downward it grew into jet black. For the rest, she was but tolerable. In truth, her teeth wronged her by sticking too far out of her mouth; but for that she would have been lovelier by much.”

“Horrid!” said Rhoda. “I forget where she came from, Mrs Dolly?”

“She came from Portingale, my dear, being daughter to the King of that country, and her name was Catherine.”

“And what was the King like?”

“When he was little, my dear, his mother, Queen Mary, used to say he was so ugly a baby that she was quite ashamed of him. He was better-favoured when he grew a man; he had good eyes, but a large Mouth.”

(Note: Queen Mary was Henrietta Maria, always termed Queen Mary during her own reign.)

“He was a black man, was he not?”

By which term Rhoda meant what we now call a dark man.

“Yes, very black and swarthy.”

“Where did he commonly live?”

“Mostly at Whitehall or Saint James’s. At times he went to Hampton Court, and often, for a change of sir, to Newmarket; now and then to Tunbridge Wells. He was but little at Windsor.”

“Did you like him, Mrs Dorothy?”

Phoebe looked up, when no answer came. The expression of Mrs Dorothy’s face was a curious mixture of fear, repulsion, and yet amusement.

“No!” she said at length.

“Why not?” demanded Rhoda.

“Well, there were some that did,” was the reply, in a rather constrained tone; “and the one that he behaved the worst to loved him the best of all.”

“How droll!” said Rhoda. “And who were your friends, then, Mrs Dorothy?”

“That depends, my dear, on what you mean by friends. If you mean them that flattered me, and joked with me, and the like,—why, I had very many; or if you mean them that would take some trouble to push me in the world,—well, there were several of those; but if you mean such as are only true friends, that would have cast one thought to my real welfare, whether I should go to Heaven or Hell,—I had but one of that sort.”

“And who was your one friend, Mrs Dolly?” asked Rhoda, pursing up her lips a little.

“The King’s Scots cook, my dear,” quietly replied Mrs Dorothy.

“Thewhat?” shrieked Rhoda, going into convulsions of laughter.

“Ah, you may laugh, Mrs Rhoda. You know there’s an old saying, ‘Let them laugh that win.’ If ever an old sinner like me enters the gates of Heaven, so far as the human means are concerned, I shall owe it, first of all, to old David Armstrong.”

“Will you please to tell us about him, Madam?” rather timidly asked Phoebe.

“With all my heart, my dear. Dear old Davie! Methinks I see him now. Picture to yourselves, my dears, a short man, something stooping in the shoulders, with sharp features and iron-grey hair; always dressed in his white cooking garb, and a white cap over his frizzled locks. But before I tell you what I knew of old Davie, methinks I had better tell you a tale of him that will give you some diversion, without I mistake.”

“Oh do, Mrs Dolly?” cried Rhoda, who feared nothing so much as too great seriousness in her friend’s stones.

“Well,” said Mrs Dorothy, “then you must know, my dears, that once upon a time the King and Queen were at dinner, and with them, amongst others, my Lord Rochester, who was at that time a very wild gallant. He died, indeed, very penitent, and, I trust, a saved man; but let that be. They were sat after dinner, and my Lord Rochester passes the bottle about to his next neighbour. ‘Come, man!’ saith the King, in his rollicksome way, ‘take a glass of that which cheereth God and man, as Scripture saith.’ My Lord Rochester at once bets the King forty pound that there was no such saying in Scripture. The King referreth all to the Queen’s chaplain, that happened to be the only parson then present; but saith again, that though he could not name the place, yet he was as certain to have read it in Scripture as that his name was Charles, ‘What thinks your Majesty?’ quoth my Lord Rochester, turning to the Queen. She, very modestly—”

“But, Mrs Dolly, was not the Queen a Papist? What would she know about the Bible?”

“So she was, my dear. But they have a Bible of their own, that they allow the reading of to certain persons. And I dare say she was one. However, my Lord Rochester asked her, for I heard him; and she said, very womanly, that she was unfit to decide such matters, but she could not think there to be any such passage in the Bible.”

“Why, there isn’t!” rashly interpolated Rhoda.

Mrs Dorothy smiled, but did not contradict her.

“Then up spoke the Queen’s chaplain, and gave his voice like his mistress, that there was no such passage; and several others of them at the table said they thought the like. So the King, swearing his wonted oath, cried out for some to bring a Bible, that he might search and see.”

“O Mrs Dolly! what was his favourite oath?”

“I do not see, my dear, that it would do you any good to know it. Well, the Bible, as matters went, was not to be had. King, Queen, chaplain, and courtiers, there was not a man nor woman at the table that owned to possessing a Bible.”

“How shocking!” said Phoebe, under her breath.

“Very shocking, my dear,” assented Mrs Dorothy. “But all at once my Lord Rochester cries out, ‘Please your Majesty, I’ll lay you forty shillings there’s one man in this palace that has a Bible! He cut me short for swearing in the yard a month since. That’s old David, your Majesty’s Scots cook. If you’ll send for him—’ ‘Done!’ says the King. ‘Killigrew, root out old Davie, and tell him to come here, and bring his Bible with him.’ So away went Mr Killigrew, the King’s favourite page; and ere long back he comes, and old Davie with him, and under Davie’s arm a great brown book. ‘Here he is, Sire, Bible and all!’ says Mr Killigrew. ‘Come forward, Davie, and be hanged!’ says the King. ‘I’ll come forward, Sire, at your Majesty’s bidding,’ says Davie, ‘and gin ye order it, and I ha’e deservit it, I can be hangit,’ saith he, mighty dry; ’but under your Majesty’s pleasure I’ll just tak’ the liberty to ask, Sire, what are ye wantin’ wi’ the Buik?”

“Oh, how queer you talk, Mrs Dolly!”

“As David talked, my dear. He was a Scot, you know. Well, the King gave a hearty laugh; and says he, ‘Oh, come forward, Davie, and fear nothing. We’ll not hang you, and we want no hurt to your darling book.’ ‘Atweel, Sire,’ says Davie, ‘and I’d ha’e been gey sorry gin ye had meant to hurt my buik, seein’ it was my mither’s, and I set store by it for her sake; but trust me, Sire, I’d ha’e been a hantle sorrier gin ye had meant onie disrespect to the Lord’s Buik. I’ll no stand by, wi’ a’ honour to your Majesty, an’ see I lichtlied.’”

“What does that mean, Mrs Dolly?”

“Set light by, my dear. Well, the King laughed again, but I think Davie’s words a little sobered him, for he spoke kindly enough, that no harm should be done, nor was any disrespect intended; ‘but,’ saith he, ‘my Lord Rochester and I fell a-disputing if certain words were in the Bible or no; and as you are the only man here like to have one, I sent for you.’ Davie looks, quiet enough, round all the table; and he says, under his breath, ‘The only man here like to have a Bible! Ay, your Majesty, I ken weel eneuch that I ha’e my habitation among the tents o’ Kedar. Atweel, Sire, an’ I’ll be pleasit to answer onie sic question, gin ye please to tell me the words.’ My Lord Rochester saith, ‘“Wine, which cheereth God and man.” Are such words as those in the Bible, David?’ Neither yea nor nay said old Davie: but he turned over the leaves of his Bible for a moment, and then, clearing his voice, and first doffing his cook’s cap (which he had but lifted a minute for the King), he read from the Book of Judges, Jotham’s parable of the trees. ’Twas a little while ere any spoke: then said the Queen’s chaplain, swearing a great oath, that he could not but be infinitely surprised to find there to be such words in the Bible.”

“O Mrs Dolly! a parson to swear!”

“There are different sorts of parsons, my dear. But old David thought it shocking, for he turns round to the chaplain, and saith he, ‘Your pardon, Mr Howard, but gin ye’d give me leave, I’d be pleasit to swear the neist oath for ye. It would sound rather better, ye ken, for a cook than a chaplain.’ ‘Hurrah!’ says the King, swearing himself, ‘the sprightliest humour I heard of a long time! Pray you, silence, and hear old Davie swear!’ ‘I see nothing to swear anent the now, an’ it please your Majesty,’ says Davie, mighty dry again: ‘when I do, your Majesty’ll be sure to hear it.’ The King laughed heartily, for he took Davie right enough, though I saw some look puzzled. Of course he never would see reason to do a sinful thing. But a new thought had come into the King’s head, and he turns quick to Mr Howard, and desires that he would give exposition of the words that Davie had read. ‘You ought to know what they mean, if we don’t, poor sinners,’ saith the King. ‘I protest, Sire,’ saith the chaplain, ‘that I cannot so much as guess what they mean.’ ‘Now then, David the divine,’ cries my Lord Rochester, ‘your exposition, if you please.’ And some of the courtiers, that by this time were not too sober, drummed on the table with glasses, and shouted for David’s sermon.”

“I think, Mrs Dolly, that was scarce proper, in the King’s and Queen’s presence.”

“So I think, my dear. But King Charles’s Court was Liberty Hall, and every man did that which was right in his own eyes. But Davie stood very quiet, with the Bible yet open in his hands. He waited his master’s bidding, if they did not. ‘Oh ay, go on, Davie,’ saith the King, leaning back in his chair and laughing. ‘Silence for Mr David Armstrong’s sermon!’ cries my Lord Rochester, in a voice of a master of ceremonies. But Davie took no note of any voice but the King’s, though ’twas to my Lord Rochester he addressed him when he spoke. ‘That wine cheereth man, your Lordship very well knows,’ quoth Davie, in his dry way: and seeing his Lordship had drank a bottle and a half since he sat down, I should think he did, my dears. ‘But this, that wine cheereth God, is referable to the drink-offering commanded by God of the Jews, wherein the wine doth seem to typify the precious blood of Christ, and the thankfulness of him that hath his iniquity thereby purged away. For in the fifteenth chapter of the Book of Numbers you shall find this drink-offering termed “a sweet savour unto the Lord.” And since nothing but Christ is a sweet savour unto God, therefore we judge that the wine of the drink-offering, like to that of the Sacrament, did denote the blood of Christ whereby we are redeemed; the one prefiguring that whereto it looked forward, as the other doth likewise figure that whereunto it looketh back. This, therefore, that wine cheereth God, is to be understood by an emblem, of the blood of Christ, our Mediator; for through this means God is well pleased in the way of salvation that He hath appointed, whereby His justice is satisfied. His law fulfilled, His mercy reigneth, His grace doth triumph, all His perfections do agree together, the sinner is saved, and God in Christ glorified. Now, Sire, I have done your bidding, and I humbly ask your Majesty’s leave to withdraw.’ The King said naught, but cast him a nod of consent. My dears, you never saw such a change as had come over that table. Every man seemed sobered and awed. The Queen was weeping, the King silent and thoughtful. My Lord Rochester, whom at that time nothing could sober long, was the only one to speak, and rising with make-believe gravity, as though in his place in the House of Lords, he offered a motion that the King should please to send Mr Howard into the kitchen to make kail, and raise the Reverend Mr David Armstrong to the place of chaplain.”

“What is kail, Mrs Dolly?” asked Rhoda, laughing.

“’Tis Scots broth, my dear, whereof King Charles was very fond, and old David had been fetched from Scotland on purpose to make it for him.”

“What a droll old man!” exclaimed Rhoda.

“Ah, he was one of the best men ever I knew,” said Mrs Dorothy. “But, my dear, look at the clock!”

“I declare!” cried Rhoda. “Phoebe, we have but just time to run home ere supper, if so much as that. Good evening, Mrs Dolly, and thank you. What will Madam say?”

Note: David Armstrong is a historical person, and this anecdote is true. The surname given to him only is fictitious, as history does not record any name but “David.”

Chapter Four.Through thorny paths.“I do repent me now too late of each impatient thought,That would not let me tarry out God’s leisure as I ought.”Caroline Bowles.“Is it long since Madam woke, Baxter?” cried Rhoda in a breathless whisper, as she came in at the side door.“But this minute, Mrs Rhoda,” answered he.“That’s good!” said Rhoda aside to Phoebe, and slipping off her shoes, she ran lightly and silently upstairs, beckoning her cousin to follow.Phoebe, having no idea of the course of Rhoda’s thoughts, obeyed, and followed her example in doffing her hood and smoothing her hair.“Be quick!” said Rhoda, her own rapid movements over, and putting on her shoes again.They found Madam looking barely awake, and staring hard at her book, as if wishful to persuade herself that she had been reading.“I hope, child, you were not out all this time,” said she to Rhoda.“Oh no, Madam!” glibly answered that trustworthy young lady. “We only had a dish of tea with Mrs Dolly, and I made my compliments to the other gentlewomen.”“And where were you since, child?”“We have been upstairs, Madam,” said Rhoda, unblushingly.“Not diverting yourselves, I hope?” was Madam’s next question.“Oh no, not at all, Madam. We were not doing anything particular.”“Talking, I suppose, as maids will,” responded Madam. “Phoebe, to-morrow after breakfast bring all your clothes to my chamber. I must have you new apparelled.”“Oh, Madam, give me leave to come also!” exclaimed Rhoda, with as much eagerness as she ever dared to show in her grandmother’s presence. “I would so dearly like to hear what Phoebe is to have! Only, please, not a musk-coloured damask—you promised me that.”“My dear,” answered Madam, “you forget yourself. I cannot talk of such things to-day. You may come if you like.”Supper was finished in silence. After supper, a pale-faced, tired-looking young man, who had been previously invisible, came into the parlour, and made a low reverence to Madam, which she returned with a queenly bend of her head. His black cassock and scarf showed him to be in holy orders. Madam rang the hand-bell, the servants filed in, and evening prayers were read by the young chaplain, in a thin, monotonous voice, with a manner which indicated that he was not interested himself, and did not expect interest in any one else. Then the servants filed out again; the chaplain kissed Madam’s hand, and wished her good-night, bowed distantly to Rhoda, half bowed to Phoebe, instantly drew himself up as if he thought he was making a mistake, and finally disappeared.“’Tis time you were abed, maids,” said Madam.Rhoda somewhat slowly rose, knelt before her grandmother, and kissed her hand.“Good-night, my dear. God bless thee, and make thee a good maid!” was Madam’s response.Phoebe had risen, and stood, rather hesitatingly, behind her cousin. She was doubtful whether Madam would be pleased or displeased if she followed Rhoda’s example. In her new life it seemed probable that she would not be short of opportunities for the exercise of meekness, forbearance, and humility. Madam’s quick eyes detected Phoebe’s difficulty in an instant.“Good-night, Phoebe,” she said, rising.“Good-night, Madam,” replied Phoebe in a low voice, as she followed Rhoda. It was evident that no relationship was to be recognised.“Here, you carry the candle,” said Rhoda, nodding towards the hall table on which the candlesticks stood. “That’s what you are here for, I suppose,—to save me trouble. Dear, I forgot my cloak,—see where it is! Bring it with you, Phoebe.”Demurely enough Rhoda preceded Phoebe upstairs. But no sooner was the bedroom door closed behind them, than Rhoda threw herself into the large invalid chair, and laughed with hearty amusement.“Oh, didn’t I take her in? Wasn’t it neatly done, now? Didn’t you admire me, Phoebe?”“You told her a lie!” retorted Phoebe, indignantly.“’Sh!—that’s not a pretty word,” said Rhoda, pursing her lips. “Say a fib, next time.—Nonsense! Not a bit of it, Phoebe. We had been upstairs since we came in.”“Only a minute,” answered Phoebe. “You made her think what was not true. Father called that a lie,—I don’t know what you call it.”“Now, Phoebe,” said Rhoda severely, “don’t you be a little Puritan. If you set up for a saint at White-Ladies, I can just tell you, you’ll pull your own nest about your ears. You are mightily mistaken if you think Madam has any turn for saints. She reckons them designing persons—every soul of ’em. You’ll just get into a scrape if you don’t have a care.”Phoebe made no reply. She was standing by the window, looking up into the darkened sky. There were no blinds at White-Ladies.It was well for Rhoda—or was it well?—that she could not just then see into Phoebe’s heart. The cry that “shivered to the tingling stars” was unheard by her. “O Father, Father,” said the cry. “Why did you die and leave your poor little Phoebe, whom nobody loves, whose love nobody wants, with whom nobody here has one feeling in common?” And then all at once came as it were a vision before her eyes, of a scene whereof she had heard very frequently from her father,—a midnight meeting of the Desert Church, in a hollow of the Cevennes mountains, guarded by sentinels posted on the summit,—a meeting which to attend was to brave the gallows or the galleys,—and Phoebe fancied she could hear the words of the opening hymn, as the familiar tune floated past her:—“Mon sort n’est pas à plaindre,Il est à désirer;Je n’ai plus rien à craindre,Car Dieu est mon Berger.”It was a quiet, peaceful face which was turned back to Rhoda.“Did you hear?” rather sharply demanded that young lady.“Yes, I heard what you said,” calmly replied Phoebe. “But I have been a good way since.”“A good way!—where?” rejoined her cousin.“To France and back,” said Phoebe, with a smile.“What are you talking about?” stared Rhoda. “I said nothing about France; I was telling you not to be a prig and a saint, and make Madam angry.”“I won’t vex her if I can help it,” answered Phoebe.“Well, but you will, if you set up to be better than your neighbours,—that’s pos.! Take the pins out of my commode.”“Why should not I be better than my neighbours?” asked Phoebe, as she pulled out the pins.“Because they’ll all hate you—that’s why. I must have clean ruffles—they are in that top drawer.”“Aren’t you better than your neighbours?” innocently suggested Phoebe, coming back with the clean ruffles.Rhoda paused to consider how she should deal with the subject. The question was not an easy one to answer. She believed herself very much better, in every respect: to say No, therefore, would belie her wishes and convictions; yet to say Yes, would spoil the effect of her lecture. There was moreover, a dim impression on her mind that Phoebe was incapable of perceiving the delicate distinction between them, which made it inevitable that Rhoda should be better than Phoebe, and highly indecorous that Phoebe should attempt to be better than Rhoda. On the whole, it seemed desirable to turn the conversation.“Oh, not these ruffles, Phoebe! These are some of my best. Bring a pair of common ones—those with the box plaits.—What were you thinking about France?”“Oh, nothing particular. I was only—”“Never mind, if you don’t want to tell,” said Rhoda, graciously, now that her object was attained. “I wonder what new clothes Madam will give you. A camlet for best, I dare say, and duffel for every day. Don’t you want to know?”“No, not very much.”“I should, if I were you. I like to go fine. Not that she’ll giveyoufine things, you know—not likely. There! put my shoes out to clean, and tuck me up nicely, and then if you like you can go to bed. I shan’t want anything more.”Phoebe did as she was requested, and then knelt down.“I vow!” exclaimed her cousin, when she rose. “Do you say your prayers on Sunday nights? I never do. Why, we’ve only just been at it downstairs. And what a time you are! I’m never more than five minutes with mine!”“I couldn’t say all I want in five minutes,” replied Phoebe.“Want! why, what do you want?” said Rhoda. “I want nothing. I’ve got to do it—that’s all.”“Well, I dare say five minutes is enough for that,” was the quiet reply from Phoebe. “But when people get into trouble, then they do want things.”“Trouble! Oh, you don’t know!” said Rhoda, loftily. “I’ve had heaps of trouble.”“Have you?” innocently demanded Phoebe, in an interested tone.“Well, I should think so! More than ever you had.”“What were they?” said Phoebe, in the same manner.“Why, first, my mother died when I was only a week old,” explained Rhoda. “I suppose, you call that a trouble?”“Not when you were a week old,” said Phoebe; “it would be afterwards—with some people. But I should not think it was, much, with you. You have had Madam.”“Well, then my father went off to London, and spent all his estate, that I should have had, and there was nothing left for me. That was a trouble, I suppose?”“If you had plenty beside, I should not think it was.”“‘Plenty beside!’ Phoebe, you are the silliest creature! Why, don’t you see that I should have been a great fortune, if I had had Peveril as well as White-Ladies? I should have set my cap at a lord, I can tell you. Only think, Phoebe, I should have had sixty thousand pounds. What do you say to that? Sixty thousand pounds!”“I should think it is more than you could ever spend.”“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Rhoda. “When White-Ladies is mine, I shall have a riding-horse and a glass coach; and I will have a splendid set of diamonds, and pearls too. They cost something, I can tell you. Oh, ’tis easy spending money. You’ll see, when it comes to me.”“Are you sure it will come to you?”“Why, of course it will!” exclaimed Rhoda, sitting up, and leaning on her elbow. “To whom else would Madam leave it, I should like to know! Why, you never expect her to give it toyou, poor little white-faced thing? I vow, but that is a good jest!”Rhoda’s laugh had more bitterness than mirth in it. Phoebe’s smile was one of more unmixed amusement.“Pray make yourself easy,” said Phoebe. “I never expect anything, and then I am not disappointed.”“Well, I’ll just tell you what!” rejoined her cousin. “If I catch you making up to Madam, trying to please all her whims, and chime in with her vapours, and that—fancying she’ll leave you White-Ladies—I tell you, Phoebe Latrobe, I’ll never forgive you as long as I live! There!”Rhoda was very nearly, if not quite, in a passion. Phoebe turned and looked at her.“Cousin,” she said, gently, “you will see me try to please Madam, since ’tis my duty: but if you suppose ’tis with any further object, such as what she might give me, you very ill know Phoebe Latrobe.”“Well, mind your business!” said Rhoda, rather fiercely.A few minutes later she was asleep. But sleep did not visit Phoebe’s eyes that night.When the morning came, Rhoda seemed quite to have forgotten her vexation. She chattered away while she was dressing, on various topics, but chiefly respecting the new clothes which Madam had promised to Phoebe. If words might be considered a criterion, Rhoda appeared to take far more interest in these than Phoebe herself.Breakfast was a solemn and silent ceremony. When it was over, Madam desired Phoebe to attend her in her own chamber, and to bring her wardrobe with her. Rhoda followed, unasked, and sat down on the form at the foot of the bed to await her cousin. Phoebe came in with her arms full of dresses and cloaks. She was haunted by a secret apprehension which she would not on any account have put into words—that she might no longer be allowed to wear mourning for her dead father. But Phoebe’s fears were superfluous. Madam thought far too much of the proprieties of life to commit such an indecorum. However little she had liked or respected the Rev. Charles Latrobe, she would never have thought of requiring his child to lay aside her mourning until the conventional two years had elapsed from the period of his decease.Phoebe’s common attire was very quickly discarded, as past further wear; and she was desired to wear her best clothes every day, until new ones were ready for her. This decided, Rhoda was ordered to ring for Betty, Madam’s own maid, and Betty was in her turn required to fetch those stuffs which she had been bidden to lay aside till needed. Betty accordingly brought a piece of black camlet, another of black bombazine, and a third of black satin, with various trimmings. The two girls alike watched in silence, while Betty measured lengths and cut off pieces of camlet and bombazine, from which it appeared that Phoebe was to have two new dresses, and a mantua and hood of the camlet: but when Rhoda heard Betty desired to cut off satin for another mantua, her hitherto concealed chagrin broke forth.“Why, Madam!—she’ll be as fine as me!”“My dear, she will be as I choose,” answered Madam, in a tone which would have silenced any one but Rhoda. “And now, satin for a hood, Betty—”“’Tis a shame!” said Rhoda, under her breath, which was as much as she dared venture; but Madam took no notice.“You will line the hoods and mantuas warm, Betty,” pursued Madam, in her most amiable tone. “Guard the satin with fur, and the camlet with that strong gimp. And a muff she must have, Betty.”“A muff!” came in a vexed whisper from Rhoda.“And when the time comes, one of the broidered India scarves that were had of Staveley, for summer wear; but that anon. Then—”“But, Madam!” put in Rhoda, in a troubled voice, “you have never given me one of those scarves yet! I asked you for one a year ago.” To judge from her tone, Rhoda was very near tears.“My dear!” replied Madam, “’tis becoming in maids to wait till they are spoken to. Had you listened with proper respect, you would have heard me bid Betty lay out one also for you. You cannot use them at this season.”Rhoda subsided, somewhat discontentedly.“Two pairs of black Spanish gloves, Betty; and a black fan, and black velvet stays. (When the year is out she must have a silver lace.) And bid Dobbins send up shoes to fit on, with black buckles—two pairs; and lay out black stockings—two pairs of silk, and two of worsted; and plain cambric aprons—they may be laced when the year is out. I think that is all. Oh!—a fur tippet, Betty.”And with this last order Madam marched away.“Oh, shocking!” cried Rhoda, the instant she thought her grandmother out of hearing. “I vow, but she’s going to have you as fine as me. Every bit of it. Betty, isn’t it a shame?”“Well, no, Mrs Rhoda, I don’t see as how ’tis,” returned Betty, bluntly. “Mrs Phoebe, she’s just the same to Madam as you are.”“But she isn’t!” exclaimed Rhoda, blazing up. “I’m her eldest daughter’s child, and she’s only the youngest. And she hasn’t done it before, neither. Last night she didn’t let her kiss her hand. I say, Betty, ’tis a crying shame!”“Maybe Madam thought better of it this morning,” suggested Betty, speaking with a pin in her mouth.“Well, ’tis a burning shame!” growled Rhoda.“Perhaps, Mrs Betty,” said Phoebe’s low voice, “you could leave the satin things for a little while?”“Mrs Phoebe, I durstn’t, my dear!” rejoined Betty; “nay, not if ’twas ever so! Madam, she’s used to have folk do as she bids ’em; and she’ll make ’em, too! Never you lay Mrs Rhoda’s black looks to heart, my dear, she’ll have forgot all about it by this time to-morrow.”Rhoda had walked away.“But I shall not!” answered Phoebe, softly.“Deary me, child!” said Betty, turning to look at her, “don’t you go for to fret over that. Why, if a bit of a thing like that’ll trouble you, you’ll have plenty to fret about at White-Ladies. Mrs Rhoda, she’s on and off with you twenty times a day; and you’d best take no notice. She don’t mean anything ill, my dear; ’tis only her phantasies.”“Oh, Mrs Betty! I wish—”“Phoebe!” came up from below. “Fetch my cloak and hood, and bring your own—quick, now! We are about to drive out with Madam.”“Come, dry your eyes, child, and I’ll fetch the things,” said Betty, soothingly. “You’ll be the better of a drive.”Rhoda’s annoyance seemed to have vanished from her mind as well as from her countenance; and Madam took no notice of Phoebe’s disturbed looks. The Maidens’ Lodge, was first visited, and a messenger sent in to ask Lady Betty if she were inclined to take the air. Lady Betty accepted the offer, and was so considerate as not to keep Madam wailing more than ten minutes. No further invitation was offered, and the coach rumbled away in the direction of Gloucester.For a time Phoebe heard little of the conversation between the elder ladies, and Rhoda, as usual in her grandmother’s presence, was almost silent. At length she woke up to a remark made by Lady Betty.“Then you think, Madam, to send for Gatty and Molly?”“That is my design, my Lady Betty. ’Twill be a diversion for Rhoda; and Sir Richard was so good as to say they should come if I would.”“Indeed, I think he would be easy to have them from home, Madam, till they may see if Betty’s disorder be the small-pox or no.”“When did Betty return home, my Lady?”“But last Tuesday. ’Tis not possible that her sisters have taken aught of her, for she had been ailing some days ere she set forth, and they have bidden at home all the time. You will be quite safe, Madam.”“So I think, my Lady Betty,” replied Madam. “Rhoda, have you been listening?”“No, Madam,” answered Rhoda, demurely.“Then ’tis time you should, my dear,” said Madam, graciously. “I will acquaint you of the affair. I think to write to Lady Delawarr, and ask the favour of Mrs Gatty and Mrs Molly to visit me. Their sister Mrs Betty, as I hear, is come home from the Bath, extreme distempered; and ’tis therefore wise to send away Mrs Gatty and little Mrs Molly until Mrs Betty be recovered of her disorder. I would have you be very nice toward them, that they shall find their visit agreeable.”“How long will they stay, Madam?” inquired Rhoda.“Why, child, that must hang somewhat on Mrs Betty’s recovering. I take it, it shall be about a month; but should her distemper be tardy of disappearing, it shall then be something longer.”“Jolly!” was the sound which seemed to Phoebe to issue in an undertone from the lips of Rhoda. But the answer which reached her grandmother’s ears was merely a sedate “Yes, Madam.”“I take it, my Lady Betty,” observed Madam, turning to her companion, “that the sooner the young gentlewomen are away, the better shall it be.”“Oh, surely, Madam!” answered Lady Betty. “’Tis truly very good of you to ask it; but you are always a general undertaker for your friends.”“We were sent into this world to do good, my Lady Betty,” returned Madam, sententiously.Unless Phoebe’s ears were deceived, a whisper very like “Fudge!” came from Rhoda.The somewhat solemn drive was finished at last; Lady Betty was set down at the Maidens’ Lodge; inquiries were made as to the health of Mrs Marcella, who returned a reply intimating that she was a suffering martyr; and Rhoda and Phoebe at last found themselves free from superveillance, and safe in their bedroom.“Now that’s just jolly!” was Rhoda’s first remark, with nothing in particular to precede it. “Molly Delawarr’s a darling! I don’t much care for Gatty, and Betty I just hate. She’s a prig and a fid-fad both. But Molly—oh, Phoebe, she’s as smart as can be. Such parts she has! You know, she’s really—not quite you understand—but really she’s almost as clever as I am!”Phoebe did not seem overwhelmed by this information; she only said, “Is she?”“Well, nearly,” said Rhoda. “She knows fourteen Latin words, Molly does; and she always brings them in.”“Into what?” asked Phoebe, with the little amused laugh which was very rare with her.“Into her discourse, to be sure, child!” said Rhoda, loftily, “You don’t know fourteen Latin words; how should you?”“How should I, indeed,” rejoined Phoebe, meekly, “if father had not taught me?”“Taught you—taught you Latin?” gasped Rhoda.“Just a little Latin and Greek; there wasn’t time for much,” humbly responded Phoebe.“Greek!” shrieked Rhoda.“Very little, please,” deprecated Phoebe.“Phoebe, you dear sweet darling love of a Phoebe!” cried Rhoda, kissing her cousin, to the intense astonishment of the latter; “now won’t you, like a dear as you are, just tell me one or two Greek words? I would give anything to outshine Molly and make her look foolish, I would! She doesn’t know one word of Greek—only Latin. Do, for pity’s sake, tell me, if ’tis only one Greek word! and I won’t say another syllable, not if Madam gives you a diamond necklace!”Phoebe was laughing more than she had yet ever done at White-Ladies. She was far too innocent and amiable to think of playing Rhoda the trick of which Melanie’s father was guilty, inContes à ma Fille, when, under the impression that she was saying in Latin, “Knowledge gives the right to laugh at everything,” he cruelly caused her to remark in public, “I am a very ridiculous donkey.” Phoebe bore no malice. She only said, still smiling, “I don’t know what words to tell you.”“Oh, any!” answered Rhoda, accommodatingly. “What’s the Greek for ugly?”“I don’t know,” said Phoebe, dubiously. “Kakos meansbad.”“And what isgoodandpretty?”“Agathos isgood,” replied Phoebe, laughing; “andbeautifulis kallios.”“That’ll do!” said Rhoda, triumphantly. “’Tis plenty,—I couldn’t remember more. Let me see,—kaks, and agathos, and kallius—is that right?”Phoebe laughingly offered the necessary corrections. “All right!” said Rhoda. “I’ve no more to wish for. I’ll take the shine out of Molly!”At supper that evening, Madam announced that she had sent her note to Lady Delawarr by a mounted messenger, and had received an answer, according to which Gatty and Molly might be expected to arrive at White-Ladies on Wednesday evening. Madam appeared to be in one of her most gracious moods, for she even condescended to inform Phoebe that Mrs Gatty was two months older than Rhoda, and Mrs Molly four years her junior,—“two years younger than you, my dear,” said Madam, very affably.“Now, Phoebe, I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” asserted Rhoda, as she sat down before the glass that night to have her hair undressed by her cousin. “I’m not going to have Molly teasing about the old gentlewomen down yonder. I’ll soon shut her mouth if she begins; and if Gatty wants to go down there, well, she can go by herself. So I’ll tell you what: you and I will drink a dish of tea with Mrs Dolly to-morrow, and we’ll make her finish her story. I only do wish the dear old tiresome thing wouldn’t preach! Then I’ll take you in to see Mrs Marcella, and we’ll get that done. Then in the morning, you must just set out all my gowns on the bed, and I’ll have both you and Betty to sew awhile I must have some lace on that blue. I’ll make Madam give me a pair of new silver buckles, too. I can’t do unless I cut out those creatures somehow. And the only way to cut out Gatty is by dress, because she hasn’t anything in her,—’tis all on her. I cut out Molly in brains. But my Lady Delawarr likes to dress Gatty up, because she fancies the awkward thing’s pretty. She isn’t, you know,—not a speck; butshethinks so.”Whether the last pronoun referred to Lady Delawarr or to Gatty, Rhoda was not sufficiently perspicuous to indicate. Phoebe went on disentangling her hair in silence, and Rhoda likewise fell into a brown study.Of the nature of her thoughts that young lady gave but two intimations: the first, as she tied up her hair in the loose bag which then served for a night-cap,—“I cannot abide that Betty!”The second came a long while afterwards, just as Phoebe was dropping to sleep.“I say, Phoebe!”“Yes?”“Did you say ‘kakios?’”Phoebe had to collect her thoughts. “Kakos,” she said.“Oh, all right;theywon’t know. But won’t I take the shine out of that Molly!”Phoebe’s arrested sleep came back to her as she was reflecting on the curious idea which her cousin seemed to have of friendship.“Come along, Phoebe! This is the shortest way.”“Oh, couldn’t we go by the road?” asked Phoebe, drawing back apprehensively, as Rhoda sprang lightly from the top of the stile which led into the meadow.“Of course we could, but ’tis ever so much further round, and not half so pleasant. Why?”“There are—cows!” said Phoebe, under her breath.Rhoda laughed more decidedly than civilly.“Cows! Did you never see cows before? I say, Phoebe, come along! Don’t be so silly!”Phoebe obeyed, but in evident trepidation, and casting many nervous glances at the dreaded cows, until the girls had passed the next stile.“Cows don’t bite, silly Phoebe!” said Rhoda, rather patronisingly, from the height of her two years’ superiority in age.“But they toss sometimes, don’t they?” tremblingly demanded Phoebe.“What nonsense!” said Rhoda, as they rounded the Maidens’ Lodge.Little Mrs Dorothy sat sewing at her window, and she nodded cheerily to her young guests as they came in.“What do you think, Mrs Dolly?—good evening!” said Rhoda, parenthetically. “If this foolish Phoebe isn’t frighted of a cow!”“Sure, my dear, that is no wonder, for one bred in in the town,” gently deprecated Mrs Dorothy.“So stupid and nonsensical!” said Rhoda. “I say, Mrs Dolly, are you afraid of anything?”“Yes, my dear,” was the quiet answer.“Oh!” said Rhoda. “Cows?”“No, not cows,” returned Mrs Dorothy, smiling.“Frogs? Beetles?” suggested Rhoda.“I do not think I am afraid of any animal, at least in this country, without it be vipers,” said Mrs Dorothy. “But—well, I dare say I am but a foolish old woman in many regards. I oft fear things which I note others not to fear at all.”“But what sort of things, Mrs Dolly?” inquired Rhoda, who had made herself extremely comfortable with a large chair and sundry cushions.“I will tell you of three things, my dear, of which I have always felt afraid, at the least since I came to years of discretion. And most folks are not afraid of any of them. I am afraid of getting rich. I am afraid of being married. And I am afraid of judging my neighbours.”“Oh!” cried Rhoda, in genuine amazement. “Why, Mrs Dolly, whatdoyou mean? As to judging one’s neighbours,—well, I suppose the Bible says something against that; but we all do it, you know.”“We do, my dear; more’s the pity.”“But getting rich, and being married! Oh, Mrs Dolly! Everybody wants those.”“No, my dear, asking your pardon,” replied the old lady, in a tone of decision unusual with her. “I trust every Christian does not want to be rich, when the Lord hath given him so many warnings against it. And every man does not want to marry, nor every woman neither.”“Well, not every man, perhaps,” admitted Rhoda; “but every woman does, Mrs Dolly.”“My dear, I am sorry to hear a woman say it,” answered Mrs Dorothy, with as much warmth as was consonant with her nature. “I hoped that was a man’s delusion.”“Why, Mrs Dolly! I do,” said Rhoda, with great candour.“Then I wish you more wisdom, child.”“Well, upon my word!” exclaimed Rhoda. “Didn’t you, when you were young, Mrs Dolly?”“No, I thank God, nor when I was old neither,” replied Mrs Dorothy, in the same tone.“But, Mrs Dolly! A maid has no station in society!” said Rhoda, using a phrase which she had picked up from one of her grandfather’s books.“My dear, your station is where God puts you. A maid has just as good a station as a wife; and a much pleasanter, to my thinking.”“Pleasanter!” exclaimed Rhoda. “Why, Mrs Dolly, nobody thinks anything of an old maid, except to pity her.”“They may keep their pity to themselves,” said Mrs Dorothy, with a little laugh. “We old maids can pity them back again, and with more reason.”“Mrs Dolly, would you have all the world hermits?”“No, my dear; nor do I at all see why people should always leap to the conclusion that an old maid must be an ill-tempered, lonely, disappointed creature. Sure, there are other relatives in this world beside husbands and children; and if she choose her own lot, what cause hath she for disappointment? ’Tis but a few day since Mr Leighton said, in my hearing, ‘Of course we know, when a gentlewoman is unwed, ’tis her misfortune rather than her fault’—and I do believe the poor man thought he paid us women a compliment in so speaking. For me, I felt it an insult.”“Why so, Mrs Dolly?”“Why, think what it meant, my dear. ‘Of course, a woman cannot be so insensible to the virtues and attractions of men that she should wish to remain unwed; therefore, if this calamity overtake her, it shows that she hath no virtues nor attractions herself.’”“You don’t think Mr Leighton meant that, Mrs Dolly?” asked Rhoda, laughing.“No, my dear; I think he did not see the meaning of his own words. But tell me, if it is not a piece of great vanity on the part of men, that while they never think to condole with a man who is unmarried, but take it undoubted that he prefers that life, they take it as equally undoubted that a woman doth not prefer it, and lament over her being left at ease and liberty as though she had suffered some great misfortune?”“I never did see such queer notions as you have, Mrs Dolly! I can’t think where you get them,” said Rhoda. “However, you may say what you will;Imean to marry, and I am going to be rich too. And I expect I shall like both of them.”“My dear!” and Mrs Dorothy laid down her work, and looked earnestly at Rhoda. “How do you know you are going to be rich?”“Why, I shall have White-Ladies,” answered Rhoda. “And of course Aunt Harriet will leave me everything.”“Have Madam and Mrs Harriet told you so, my dear?”“No,” said Rhoda, rather impatiently. “But who else should they leave it to?”Mrs Dorothy let that part of the matter drop quietly.“‘They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare,’” she said, taking up her work again.“What snare?” said Rhoda, bluntly.“They get their hearts choked up,” said the old lady.“With what, Mrs Dolly?”“‘Cares, and riches, and pleasures of this life.’ O my dear, may the Lord make your heart soft! Yet I am afraid—I am very sore afraid, that the only way of making some hearts soft is—to break them.”“Well, I don’t want my heart breaking, thank you,” laughed Rhoda; “and I don’t think anything would break it, unless I lost all my money, and was left an old maid. O Mrs Dolly, I can’t think how you bear it! To come down, now, and live in one of these little houses, and have people looking down on you, instead of looking up to you—if anything of the sort would kill me, I think that would.”“Well, it hasn’t killed me, child,” said Mrs Dorothy, calmly; “but then, you see, I chose it. That makes a difference.”“But you didn’t choose to be poor, Mrs Dolly?”“Well, yes, in one sense, I did,” answered the old lady, a little tinge of colour rising in her pale cheek.“How so?” demanded Rhoda, who was not deterred from gaining information by any delicacy in asking questions.“There was a time once, my dear, that I might have married a gentleman of title, with a rent-roll of six thousand a year.”“Mrs Dolly! you don’t mean that?” cried Rhoda. “And why on earth didn’t you?”“Well, my dear, I had two reasons,” answered Mrs Dorothy. “One was”—with a little laugh—“that as you see, I preferred to be one of these same ill-conditioned, lonely, disappointed old maids. And the other was”—and Mrs Dorothy’s voice sank to a softer and graver tone—“I could not have taken my Master with me into that house. I saw no track of His footsteps along that road. And His sheep follow Him.”“But God means us to be happy, Mrs Dolly?”“Surely, my dear. But He knows better than we how empty and fleeting is all happiness other than is found in Him. ’Tis only because the Lord is our Shepherd that we shall not want.”“Mrs Dolly, that is what good people say; but it always sounds so gloomy and melancholy.”“What sounds melancholy, my dear?” inquired Mrs Dorothy, with slight surprise in her tone.“Why, that one must find all one’s happiness in reading sermons, and chanting Psalms, and thinking how soon one is going to die,” said Rhoda, with an uncomfortable shrug.“My dear!” exclaimed Mrs Dorothy, “when did you ever hear me say anything of the kind?”“Why, that was what you meant, wasn’t it,” answered Rhoda, “when you talked about finding happiness in piety?”“And when did I do that?”“Just now, this minute back,” said Rhoda in surprise.“My dear child, you strangely misapprehend me. I never spoke a word of finding happiness in piety; I spoke of finding it in God. And God is not sermons, nor chanting, nor death. He is life, and light, and love. I never think how soon I shall die. I often think how soon the Lord may come; but there is a vast difference between looking for the coming of a thing that you dread, and looking for the coming of a person whom you long to see.”“But you will die, Mrs Dolly?”“Perhaps, my dear. The Lord may come first; I hope so.”“Oh dear!” said Rhoda. “But that means the world may come to an end.”“Yes. The sooner the better,” replied the old lady.“But you don’twantthe world to end, Mrs Dolly?”“I do, my clear. I want the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.”“Oh dear!” cried Rhoda again. “Why, Mrs Dolly, I can’t bear to think of it. It would be an end of everything I care about.”“My dear,” said the old lady, gravely and yet tenderly, “if the Lord’s coming will put an end to everything you care about, that must be because you don’t care much for Him.”“I don’t know anything about Him, except what we hear in church,” answered Rhoda uneasily.“And don’t care for that?” softly responded her old friend.Rhoda fidgeted for a moment, and then let the truth out.“Well, no, Mrs Dolly, Idon’t. I know it sounds very wicked and shocking; but how can I, when ’tis all so far off? It doesn’t feel real, as you do, and Madam, and all the other people I know. I can’t tell how you make it real.”“Hemakes it real, my child. ’Tis faith which sees God. How can you see Him without it? But I am not shocked, my dear. You have only told me what I knew before.”“I don’t see how you knew,” said Rhoda uncomfortably; “and I don’t know how people get faith.”“By asking the Lord for it,” said Mrs Dolly. “Phoebe, my child, is it a sorrowful thing to thee to think on Christ and His coming again?”“Oh no!” was Phoebe’s warm answer. “You see, Madam, I haven’t anything else.”“Dear child, thank God for it!” replied Mrs Dorothy softly. “‘Ton sort n’est pas à plaindre.’”“I declare, if ’tis not four o’clock!” cried Rhoda, springing up, and perhaps not sorry for the diversion. “There, now! I meant you to finish your story, and we haven’t time left. Come along, Phoebe! We are going to look in a minute on Mrs Marcella, and then we must hurry home.”

“I do repent me now too late of each impatient thought,That would not let me tarry out God’s leisure as I ought.”Caroline Bowles.

“I do repent me now too late of each impatient thought,That would not let me tarry out God’s leisure as I ought.”Caroline Bowles.

“Is it long since Madam woke, Baxter?” cried Rhoda in a breathless whisper, as she came in at the side door.

“But this minute, Mrs Rhoda,” answered he.

“That’s good!” said Rhoda aside to Phoebe, and slipping off her shoes, she ran lightly and silently upstairs, beckoning her cousin to follow.

Phoebe, having no idea of the course of Rhoda’s thoughts, obeyed, and followed her example in doffing her hood and smoothing her hair.

“Be quick!” said Rhoda, her own rapid movements over, and putting on her shoes again.

They found Madam looking barely awake, and staring hard at her book, as if wishful to persuade herself that she had been reading.

“I hope, child, you were not out all this time,” said she to Rhoda.

“Oh no, Madam!” glibly answered that trustworthy young lady. “We only had a dish of tea with Mrs Dolly, and I made my compliments to the other gentlewomen.”

“And where were you since, child?”

“We have been upstairs, Madam,” said Rhoda, unblushingly.

“Not diverting yourselves, I hope?” was Madam’s next question.

“Oh no, not at all, Madam. We were not doing anything particular.”

“Talking, I suppose, as maids will,” responded Madam. “Phoebe, to-morrow after breakfast bring all your clothes to my chamber. I must have you new apparelled.”

“Oh, Madam, give me leave to come also!” exclaimed Rhoda, with as much eagerness as she ever dared to show in her grandmother’s presence. “I would so dearly like to hear what Phoebe is to have! Only, please, not a musk-coloured damask—you promised me that.”

“My dear,” answered Madam, “you forget yourself. I cannot talk of such things to-day. You may come if you like.”

Supper was finished in silence. After supper, a pale-faced, tired-looking young man, who had been previously invisible, came into the parlour, and made a low reverence to Madam, which she returned with a queenly bend of her head. His black cassock and scarf showed him to be in holy orders. Madam rang the hand-bell, the servants filed in, and evening prayers were read by the young chaplain, in a thin, monotonous voice, with a manner which indicated that he was not interested himself, and did not expect interest in any one else. Then the servants filed out again; the chaplain kissed Madam’s hand, and wished her good-night, bowed distantly to Rhoda, half bowed to Phoebe, instantly drew himself up as if he thought he was making a mistake, and finally disappeared.

“’Tis time you were abed, maids,” said Madam.

Rhoda somewhat slowly rose, knelt before her grandmother, and kissed her hand.

“Good-night, my dear. God bless thee, and make thee a good maid!” was Madam’s response.

Phoebe had risen, and stood, rather hesitatingly, behind her cousin. She was doubtful whether Madam would be pleased or displeased if she followed Rhoda’s example. In her new life it seemed probable that she would not be short of opportunities for the exercise of meekness, forbearance, and humility. Madam’s quick eyes detected Phoebe’s difficulty in an instant.

“Good-night, Phoebe,” she said, rising.

“Good-night, Madam,” replied Phoebe in a low voice, as she followed Rhoda. It was evident that no relationship was to be recognised.

“Here, you carry the candle,” said Rhoda, nodding towards the hall table on which the candlesticks stood. “That’s what you are here for, I suppose,—to save me trouble. Dear, I forgot my cloak,—see where it is! Bring it with you, Phoebe.”

Demurely enough Rhoda preceded Phoebe upstairs. But no sooner was the bedroom door closed behind them, than Rhoda threw herself into the large invalid chair, and laughed with hearty amusement.

“Oh, didn’t I take her in? Wasn’t it neatly done, now? Didn’t you admire me, Phoebe?”

“You told her a lie!” retorted Phoebe, indignantly.

“’Sh!—that’s not a pretty word,” said Rhoda, pursing her lips. “Say a fib, next time.—Nonsense! Not a bit of it, Phoebe. We had been upstairs since we came in.”

“Only a minute,” answered Phoebe. “You made her think what was not true. Father called that a lie,—I don’t know what you call it.”

“Now, Phoebe,” said Rhoda severely, “don’t you be a little Puritan. If you set up for a saint at White-Ladies, I can just tell you, you’ll pull your own nest about your ears. You are mightily mistaken if you think Madam has any turn for saints. She reckons them designing persons—every soul of ’em. You’ll just get into a scrape if you don’t have a care.”

Phoebe made no reply. She was standing by the window, looking up into the darkened sky. There were no blinds at White-Ladies.

It was well for Rhoda—or was it well?—that she could not just then see into Phoebe’s heart. The cry that “shivered to the tingling stars” was unheard by her. “O Father, Father,” said the cry. “Why did you die and leave your poor little Phoebe, whom nobody loves, whose love nobody wants, with whom nobody here has one feeling in common?” And then all at once came as it were a vision before her eyes, of a scene whereof she had heard very frequently from her father,—a midnight meeting of the Desert Church, in a hollow of the Cevennes mountains, guarded by sentinels posted on the summit,—a meeting which to attend was to brave the gallows or the galleys,—and Phoebe fancied she could hear the words of the opening hymn, as the familiar tune floated past her:—

“Mon sort n’est pas à plaindre,Il est à désirer;Je n’ai plus rien à craindre,Car Dieu est mon Berger.”

“Mon sort n’est pas à plaindre,Il est à désirer;Je n’ai plus rien à craindre,Car Dieu est mon Berger.”

It was a quiet, peaceful face which was turned back to Rhoda.

“Did you hear?” rather sharply demanded that young lady.

“Yes, I heard what you said,” calmly replied Phoebe. “But I have been a good way since.”

“A good way!—where?” rejoined her cousin.

“To France and back,” said Phoebe, with a smile.

“What are you talking about?” stared Rhoda. “I said nothing about France; I was telling you not to be a prig and a saint, and make Madam angry.”

“I won’t vex her if I can help it,” answered Phoebe.

“Well, but you will, if you set up to be better than your neighbours,—that’s pos.! Take the pins out of my commode.”

“Why should not I be better than my neighbours?” asked Phoebe, as she pulled out the pins.

“Because they’ll all hate you—that’s why. I must have clean ruffles—they are in that top drawer.”

“Aren’t you better than your neighbours?” innocently suggested Phoebe, coming back with the clean ruffles.

Rhoda paused to consider how she should deal with the subject. The question was not an easy one to answer. She believed herself very much better, in every respect: to say No, therefore, would belie her wishes and convictions; yet to say Yes, would spoil the effect of her lecture. There was moreover, a dim impression on her mind that Phoebe was incapable of perceiving the delicate distinction between them, which made it inevitable that Rhoda should be better than Phoebe, and highly indecorous that Phoebe should attempt to be better than Rhoda. On the whole, it seemed desirable to turn the conversation.

“Oh, not these ruffles, Phoebe! These are some of my best. Bring a pair of common ones—those with the box plaits.—What were you thinking about France?”

“Oh, nothing particular. I was only—”

“Never mind, if you don’t want to tell,” said Rhoda, graciously, now that her object was attained. “I wonder what new clothes Madam will give you. A camlet for best, I dare say, and duffel for every day. Don’t you want to know?”

“No, not very much.”

“I should, if I were you. I like to go fine. Not that she’ll giveyoufine things, you know—not likely. There! put my shoes out to clean, and tuck me up nicely, and then if you like you can go to bed. I shan’t want anything more.”

Phoebe did as she was requested, and then knelt down.

“I vow!” exclaimed her cousin, when she rose. “Do you say your prayers on Sunday nights? I never do. Why, we’ve only just been at it downstairs. And what a time you are! I’m never more than five minutes with mine!”

“I couldn’t say all I want in five minutes,” replied Phoebe.

“Want! why, what do you want?” said Rhoda. “I want nothing. I’ve got to do it—that’s all.”

“Well, I dare say five minutes is enough for that,” was the quiet reply from Phoebe. “But when people get into trouble, then they do want things.”

“Trouble! Oh, you don’t know!” said Rhoda, loftily. “I’ve had heaps of trouble.”

“Have you?” innocently demanded Phoebe, in an interested tone.

“Well, I should think so! More than ever you had.”

“What were they?” said Phoebe, in the same manner.

“Why, first, my mother died when I was only a week old,” explained Rhoda. “I suppose, you call that a trouble?”

“Not when you were a week old,” said Phoebe; “it would be afterwards—with some people. But I should not think it was, much, with you. You have had Madam.”

“Well, then my father went off to London, and spent all his estate, that I should have had, and there was nothing left for me. That was a trouble, I suppose?”

“If you had plenty beside, I should not think it was.”

“‘Plenty beside!’ Phoebe, you are the silliest creature! Why, don’t you see that I should have been a great fortune, if I had had Peveril as well as White-Ladies? I should have set my cap at a lord, I can tell you. Only think, Phoebe, I should have had sixty thousand pounds. What do you say to that? Sixty thousand pounds!”

“I should think it is more than you could ever spend.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Rhoda. “When White-Ladies is mine, I shall have a riding-horse and a glass coach; and I will have a splendid set of diamonds, and pearls too. They cost something, I can tell you. Oh, ’tis easy spending money. You’ll see, when it comes to me.”

“Are you sure it will come to you?”

“Why, of course it will!” exclaimed Rhoda, sitting up, and leaning on her elbow. “To whom else would Madam leave it, I should like to know! Why, you never expect her to give it toyou, poor little white-faced thing? I vow, but that is a good jest!”

Rhoda’s laugh had more bitterness than mirth in it. Phoebe’s smile was one of more unmixed amusement.

“Pray make yourself easy,” said Phoebe. “I never expect anything, and then I am not disappointed.”

“Well, I’ll just tell you what!” rejoined her cousin. “If I catch you making up to Madam, trying to please all her whims, and chime in with her vapours, and that—fancying she’ll leave you White-Ladies—I tell you, Phoebe Latrobe, I’ll never forgive you as long as I live! There!”

Rhoda was very nearly, if not quite, in a passion. Phoebe turned and looked at her.

“Cousin,” she said, gently, “you will see me try to please Madam, since ’tis my duty: but if you suppose ’tis with any further object, such as what she might give me, you very ill know Phoebe Latrobe.”

“Well, mind your business!” said Rhoda, rather fiercely.

A few minutes later she was asleep. But sleep did not visit Phoebe’s eyes that night.

When the morning came, Rhoda seemed quite to have forgotten her vexation. She chattered away while she was dressing, on various topics, but chiefly respecting the new clothes which Madam had promised to Phoebe. If words might be considered a criterion, Rhoda appeared to take far more interest in these than Phoebe herself.

Breakfast was a solemn and silent ceremony. When it was over, Madam desired Phoebe to attend her in her own chamber, and to bring her wardrobe with her. Rhoda followed, unasked, and sat down on the form at the foot of the bed to await her cousin. Phoebe came in with her arms full of dresses and cloaks. She was haunted by a secret apprehension which she would not on any account have put into words—that she might no longer be allowed to wear mourning for her dead father. But Phoebe’s fears were superfluous. Madam thought far too much of the proprieties of life to commit such an indecorum. However little she had liked or respected the Rev. Charles Latrobe, she would never have thought of requiring his child to lay aside her mourning until the conventional two years had elapsed from the period of his decease.

Phoebe’s common attire was very quickly discarded, as past further wear; and she was desired to wear her best clothes every day, until new ones were ready for her. This decided, Rhoda was ordered to ring for Betty, Madam’s own maid, and Betty was in her turn required to fetch those stuffs which she had been bidden to lay aside till needed. Betty accordingly brought a piece of black camlet, another of black bombazine, and a third of black satin, with various trimmings. The two girls alike watched in silence, while Betty measured lengths and cut off pieces of camlet and bombazine, from which it appeared that Phoebe was to have two new dresses, and a mantua and hood of the camlet: but when Rhoda heard Betty desired to cut off satin for another mantua, her hitherto concealed chagrin broke forth.

“Why, Madam!—she’ll be as fine as me!”

“My dear, she will be as I choose,” answered Madam, in a tone which would have silenced any one but Rhoda. “And now, satin for a hood, Betty—”

“’Tis a shame!” said Rhoda, under her breath, which was as much as she dared venture; but Madam took no notice.

“You will line the hoods and mantuas warm, Betty,” pursued Madam, in her most amiable tone. “Guard the satin with fur, and the camlet with that strong gimp. And a muff she must have, Betty.”

“A muff!” came in a vexed whisper from Rhoda.

“And when the time comes, one of the broidered India scarves that were had of Staveley, for summer wear; but that anon. Then—”

“But, Madam!” put in Rhoda, in a troubled voice, “you have never given me one of those scarves yet! I asked you for one a year ago.” To judge from her tone, Rhoda was very near tears.

“My dear!” replied Madam, “’tis becoming in maids to wait till they are spoken to. Had you listened with proper respect, you would have heard me bid Betty lay out one also for you. You cannot use them at this season.”

Rhoda subsided, somewhat discontentedly.

“Two pairs of black Spanish gloves, Betty; and a black fan, and black velvet stays. (When the year is out she must have a silver lace.) And bid Dobbins send up shoes to fit on, with black buckles—two pairs; and lay out black stockings—two pairs of silk, and two of worsted; and plain cambric aprons—they may be laced when the year is out. I think that is all. Oh!—a fur tippet, Betty.”

And with this last order Madam marched away.

“Oh, shocking!” cried Rhoda, the instant she thought her grandmother out of hearing. “I vow, but she’s going to have you as fine as me. Every bit of it. Betty, isn’t it a shame?”

“Well, no, Mrs Rhoda, I don’t see as how ’tis,” returned Betty, bluntly. “Mrs Phoebe, she’s just the same to Madam as you are.”

“But she isn’t!” exclaimed Rhoda, blazing up. “I’m her eldest daughter’s child, and she’s only the youngest. And she hasn’t done it before, neither. Last night she didn’t let her kiss her hand. I say, Betty, ’tis a crying shame!”

“Maybe Madam thought better of it this morning,” suggested Betty, speaking with a pin in her mouth.

“Well, ’tis a burning shame!” growled Rhoda.

“Perhaps, Mrs Betty,” said Phoebe’s low voice, “you could leave the satin things for a little while?”

“Mrs Phoebe, I durstn’t, my dear!” rejoined Betty; “nay, not if ’twas ever so! Madam, she’s used to have folk do as she bids ’em; and she’ll make ’em, too! Never you lay Mrs Rhoda’s black looks to heart, my dear, she’ll have forgot all about it by this time to-morrow.”

Rhoda had walked away.

“But I shall not!” answered Phoebe, softly.

“Deary me, child!” said Betty, turning to look at her, “don’t you go for to fret over that. Why, if a bit of a thing like that’ll trouble you, you’ll have plenty to fret about at White-Ladies. Mrs Rhoda, she’s on and off with you twenty times a day; and you’d best take no notice. She don’t mean anything ill, my dear; ’tis only her phantasies.”

“Oh, Mrs Betty! I wish—”

“Phoebe!” came up from below. “Fetch my cloak and hood, and bring your own—quick, now! We are about to drive out with Madam.”

“Come, dry your eyes, child, and I’ll fetch the things,” said Betty, soothingly. “You’ll be the better of a drive.”

Rhoda’s annoyance seemed to have vanished from her mind as well as from her countenance; and Madam took no notice of Phoebe’s disturbed looks. The Maidens’ Lodge, was first visited, and a messenger sent in to ask Lady Betty if she were inclined to take the air. Lady Betty accepted the offer, and was so considerate as not to keep Madam wailing more than ten minutes. No further invitation was offered, and the coach rumbled away in the direction of Gloucester.

For a time Phoebe heard little of the conversation between the elder ladies, and Rhoda, as usual in her grandmother’s presence, was almost silent. At length she woke up to a remark made by Lady Betty.

“Then you think, Madam, to send for Gatty and Molly?”

“That is my design, my Lady Betty. ’Twill be a diversion for Rhoda; and Sir Richard was so good as to say they should come if I would.”

“Indeed, I think he would be easy to have them from home, Madam, till they may see if Betty’s disorder be the small-pox or no.”

“When did Betty return home, my Lady?”

“But last Tuesday. ’Tis not possible that her sisters have taken aught of her, for she had been ailing some days ere she set forth, and they have bidden at home all the time. You will be quite safe, Madam.”

“So I think, my Lady Betty,” replied Madam. “Rhoda, have you been listening?”

“No, Madam,” answered Rhoda, demurely.

“Then ’tis time you should, my dear,” said Madam, graciously. “I will acquaint you of the affair. I think to write to Lady Delawarr, and ask the favour of Mrs Gatty and Mrs Molly to visit me. Their sister Mrs Betty, as I hear, is come home from the Bath, extreme distempered; and ’tis therefore wise to send away Mrs Gatty and little Mrs Molly until Mrs Betty be recovered of her disorder. I would have you be very nice toward them, that they shall find their visit agreeable.”

“How long will they stay, Madam?” inquired Rhoda.

“Why, child, that must hang somewhat on Mrs Betty’s recovering. I take it, it shall be about a month; but should her distemper be tardy of disappearing, it shall then be something longer.”

“Jolly!” was the sound which seemed to Phoebe to issue in an undertone from the lips of Rhoda. But the answer which reached her grandmother’s ears was merely a sedate “Yes, Madam.”

“I take it, my Lady Betty,” observed Madam, turning to her companion, “that the sooner the young gentlewomen are away, the better shall it be.”

“Oh, surely, Madam!” answered Lady Betty. “’Tis truly very good of you to ask it; but you are always a general undertaker for your friends.”

“We were sent into this world to do good, my Lady Betty,” returned Madam, sententiously.

Unless Phoebe’s ears were deceived, a whisper very like “Fudge!” came from Rhoda.

The somewhat solemn drive was finished at last; Lady Betty was set down at the Maidens’ Lodge; inquiries were made as to the health of Mrs Marcella, who returned a reply intimating that she was a suffering martyr; and Rhoda and Phoebe at last found themselves free from superveillance, and safe in their bedroom.

“Now that’s just jolly!” was Rhoda’s first remark, with nothing in particular to precede it. “Molly Delawarr’s a darling! I don’t much care for Gatty, and Betty I just hate. She’s a prig and a fid-fad both. But Molly—oh, Phoebe, she’s as smart as can be. Such parts she has! You know, she’s really—not quite you understand—but really she’s almost as clever as I am!”

Phoebe did not seem overwhelmed by this information; she only said, “Is she?”

“Well, nearly,” said Rhoda. “She knows fourteen Latin words, Molly does; and she always brings them in.”

“Into what?” asked Phoebe, with the little amused laugh which was very rare with her.

“Into her discourse, to be sure, child!” said Rhoda, loftily, “You don’t know fourteen Latin words; how should you?”

“How should I, indeed,” rejoined Phoebe, meekly, “if father had not taught me?”

“Taught you—taught you Latin?” gasped Rhoda.

“Just a little Latin and Greek; there wasn’t time for much,” humbly responded Phoebe.

“Greek!” shrieked Rhoda.

“Very little, please,” deprecated Phoebe.

“Phoebe, you dear sweet darling love of a Phoebe!” cried Rhoda, kissing her cousin, to the intense astonishment of the latter; “now won’t you, like a dear as you are, just tell me one or two Greek words? I would give anything to outshine Molly and make her look foolish, I would! She doesn’t know one word of Greek—only Latin. Do, for pity’s sake, tell me, if ’tis only one Greek word! and I won’t say another syllable, not if Madam gives you a diamond necklace!”

Phoebe was laughing more than she had yet ever done at White-Ladies. She was far too innocent and amiable to think of playing Rhoda the trick of which Melanie’s father was guilty, inContes à ma Fille, when, under the impression that she was saying in Latin, “Knowledge gives the right to laugh at everything,” he cruelly caused her to remark in public, “I am a very ridiculous donkey.” Phoebe bore no malice. She only said, still smiling, “I don’t know what words to tell you.”

“Oh, any!” answered Rhoda, accommodatingly. “What’s the Greek for ugly?”

“I don’t know,” said Phoebe, dubiously. “Kakos meansbad.”

“And what isgoodandpretty?”

“Agathos isgood,” replied Phoebe, laughing; “andbeautifulis kallios.”

“That’ll do!” said Rhoda, triumphantly. “’Tis plenty,—I couldn’t remember more. Let me see,—kaks, and agathos, and kallius—is that right?”

Phoebe laughingly offered the necessary corrections. “All right!” said Rhoda. “I’ve no more to wish for. I’ll take the shine out of Molly!”

At supper that evening, Madam announced that she had sent her note to Lady Delawarr by a mounted messenger, and had received an answer, according to which Gatty and Molly might be expected to arrive at White-Ladies on Wednesday evening. Madam appeared to be in one of her most gracious moods, for she even condescended to inform Phoebe that Mrs Gatty was two months older than Rhoda, and Mrs Molly four years her junior,—“two years younger than you, my dear,” said Madam, very affably.

“Now, Phoebe, I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” asserted Rhoda, as she sat down before the glass that night to have her hair undressed by her cousin. “I’m not going to have Molly teasing about the old gentlewomen down yonder. I’ll soon shut her mouth if she begins; and if Gatty wants to go down there, well, she can go by herself. So I’ll tell you what: you and I will drink a dish of tea with Mrs Dolly to-morrow, and we’ll make her finish her story. I only do wish the dear old tiresome thing wouldn’t preach! Then I’ll take you in to see Mrs Marcella, and we’ll get that done. Then in the morning, you must just set out all my gowns on the bed, and I’ll have both you and Betty to sew awhile I must have some lace on that blue. I’ll make Madam give me a pair of new silver buckles, too. I can’t do unless I cut out those creatures somehow. And the only way to cut out Gatty is by dress, because she hasn’t anything in her,—’tis all on her. I cut out Molly in brains. But my Lady Delawarr likes to dress Gatty up, because she fancies the awkward thing’s pretty. She isn’t, you know,—not a speck; butshethinks so.”

Whether the last pronoun referred to Lady Delawarr or to Gatty, Rhoda was not sufficiently perspicuous to indicate. Phoebe went on disentangling her hair in silence, and Rhoda likewise fell into a brown study.

Of the nature of her thoughts that young lady gave but two intimations: the first, as she tied up her hair in the loose bag which then served for a night-cap,—

“I cannot abide that Betty!”

The second came a long while afterwards, just as Phoebe was dropping to sleep.

“I say, Phoebe!”

“Yes?”

“Did you say ‘kakios?’”

Phoebe had to collect her thoughts. “Kakos,” she said.

“Oh, all right;theywon’t know. But won’t I take the shine out of that Molly!”

Phoebe’s arrested sleep came back to her as she was reflecting on the curious idea which her cousin seemed to have of friendship.

“Come along, Phoebe! This is the shortest way.”

“Oh, couldn’t we go by the road?” asked Phoebe, drawing back apprehensively, as Rhoda sprang lightly from the top of the stile which led into the meadow.

“Of course we could, but ’tis ever so much further round, and not half so pleasant. Why?”

“There are—cows!” said Phoebe, under her breath.

Rhoda laughed more decidedly than civilly.

“Cows! Did you never see cows before? I say, Phoebe, come along! Don’t be so silly!”

Phoebe obeyed, but in evident trepidation, and casting many nervous glances at the dreaded cows, until the girls had passed the next stile.

“Cows don’t bite, silly Phoebe!” said Rhoda, rather patronisingly, from the height of her two years’ superiority in age.

“But they toss sometimes, don’t they?” tremblingly demanded Phoebe.

“What nonsense!” said Rhoda, as they rounded the Maidens’ Lodge.

Little Mrs Dorothy sat sewing at her window, and she nodded cheerily to her young guests as they came in.

“What do you think, Mrs Dolly?—good evening!” said Rhoda, parenthetically. “If this foolish Phoebe isn’t frighted of a cow!”

“Sure, my dear, that is no wonder, for one bred in in the town,” gently deprecated Mrs Dorothy.

“So stupid and nonsensical!” said Rhoda. “I say, Mrs Dolly, are you afraid of anything?”

“Yes, my dear,” was the quiet answer.

“Oh!” said Rhoda. “Cows?”

“No, not cows,” returned Mrs Dorothy, smiling.

“Frogs? Beetles?” suggested Rhoda.

“I do not think I am afraid of any animal, at least in this country, without it be vipers,” said Mrs Dorothy. “But—well, I dare say I am but a foolish old woman in many regards. I oft fear things which I note others not to fear at all.”

“But what sort of things, Mrs Dolly?” inquired Rhoda, who had made herself extremely comfortable with a large chair and sundry cushions.

“I will tell you of three things, my dear, of which I have always felt afraid, at the least since I came to years of discretion. And most folks are not afraid of any of them. I am afraid of getting rich. I am afraid of being married. And I am afraid of judging my neighbours.”

“Oh!” cried Rhoda, in genuine amazement. “Why, Mrs Dolly, whatdoyou mean? As to judging one’s neighbours,—well, I suppose the Bible says something against that; but we all do it, you know.”

“We do, my dear; more’s the pity.”

“But getting rich, and being married! Oh, Mrs Dolly! Everybody wants those.”

“No, my dear, asking your pardon,” replied the old lady, in a tone of decision unusual with her. “I trust every Christian does not want to be rich, when the Lord hath given him so many warnings against it. And every man does not want to marry, nor every woman neither.”

“Well, not every man, perhaps,” admitted Rhoda; “but every woman does, Mrs Dolly.”

“My dear, I am sorry to hear a woman say it,” answered Mrs Dorothy, with as much warmth as was consonant with her nature. “I hoped that was a man’s delusion.”

“Why, Mrs Dolly! I do,” said Rhoda, with great candour.

“Then I wish you more wisdom, child.”

“Well, upon my word!” exclaimed Rhoda. “Didn’t you, when you were young, Mrs Dolly?”

“No, I thank God, nor when I was old neither,” replied Mrs Dorothy, in the same tone.

“But, Mrs Dolly! A maid has no station in society!” said Rhoda, using a phrase which she had picked up from one of her grandfather’s books.

“My dear, your station is where God puts you. A maid has just as good a station as a wife; and a much pleasanter, to my thinking.”

“Pleasanter!” exclaimed Rhoda. “Why, Mrs Dolly, nobody thinks anything of an old maid, except to pity her.”

“They may keep their pity to themselves,” said Mrs Dorothy, with a little laugh. “We old maids can pity them back again, and with more reason.”

“Mrs Dolly, would you have all the world hermits?”

“No, my dear; nor do I at all see why people should always leap to the conclusion that an old maid must be an ill-tempered, lonely, disappointed creature. Sure, there are other relatives in this world beside husbands and children; and if she choose her own lot, what cause hath she for disappointment? ’Tis but a few day since Mr Leighton said, in my hearing, ‘Of course we know, when a gentlewoman is unwed, ’tis her misfortune rather than her fault’—and I do believe the poor man thought he paid us women a compliment in so speaking. For me, I felt it an insult.”

“Why so, Mrs Dolly?”

“Why, think what it meant, my dear. ‘Of course, a woman cannot be so insensible to the virtues and attractions of men that she should wish to remain unwed; therefore, if this calamity overtake her, it shows that she hath no virtues nor attractions herself.’”

“You don’t think Mr Leighton meant that, Mrs Dolly?” asked Rhoda, laughing.

“No, my dear; I think he did not see the meaning of his own words. But tell me, if it is not a piece of great vanity on the part of men, that while they never think to condole with a man who is unmarried, but take it undoubted that he prefers that life, they take it as equally undoubted that a woman doth not prefer it, and lament over her being left at ease and liberty as though she had suffered some great misfortune?”

“I never did see such queer notions as you have, Mrs Dolly! I can’t think where you get them,” said Rhoda. “However, you may say what you will;Imean to marry, and I am going to be rich too. And I expect I shall like both of them.”

“My dear!” and Mrs Dorothy laid down her work, and looked earnestly at Rhoda. “How do you know you are going to be rich?”

“Why, I shall have White-Ladies,” answered Rhoda. “And of course Aunt Harriet will leave me everything.”

“Have Madam and Mrs Harriet told you so, my dear?”

“No,” said Rhoda, rather impatiently. “But who else should they leave it to?”

Mrs Dorothy let that part of the matter drop quietly.

“‘They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare,’” she said, taking up her work again.

“What snare?” said Rhoda, bluntly.

“They get their hearts choked up,” said the old lady.

“With what, Mrs Dolly?”

“‘Cares, and riches, and pleasures of this life.’ O my dear, may the Lord make your heart soft! Yet I am afraid—I am very sore afraid, that the only way of making some hearts soft is—to break them.”

“Well, I don’t want my heart breaking, thank you,” laughed Rhoda; “and I don’t think anything would break it, unless I lost all my money, and was left an old maid. O Mrs Dolly, I can’t think how you bear it! To come down, now, and live in one of these little houses, and have people looking down on you, instead of looking up to you—if anything of the sort would kill me, I think that would.”

“Well, it hasn’t killed me, child,” said Mrs Dorothy, calmly; “but then, you see, I chose it. That makes a difference.”

“But you didn’t choose to be poor, Mrs Dolly?”

“Well, yes, in one sense, I did,” answered the old lady, a little tinge of colour rising in her pale cheek.

“How so?” demanded Rhoda, who was not deterred from gaining information by any delicacy in asking questions.

“There was a time once, my dear, that I might have married a gentleman of title, with a rent-roll of six thousand a year.”

“Mrs Dolly! you don’t mean that?” cried Rhoda. “And why on earth didn’t you?”

“Well, my dear, I had two reasons,” answered Mrs Dorothy. “One was”—with a little laugh—“that as you see, I preferred to be one of these same ill-conditioned, lonely, disappointed old maids. And the other was”—and Mrs Dorothy’s voice sank to a softer and graver tone—“I could not have taken my Master with me into that house. I saw no track of His footsteps along that road. And His sheep follow Him.”

“But God means us to be happy, Mrs Dolly?”

“Surely, my dear. But He knows better than we how empty and fleeting is all happiness other than is found in Him. ’Tis only because the Lord is our Shepherd that we shall not want.”

“Mrs Dolly, that is what good people say; but it always sounds so gloomy and melancholy.”

“What sounds melancholy, my dear?” inquired Mrs Dorothy, with slight surprise in her tone.

“Why, that one must find all one’s happiness in reading sermons, and chanting Psalms, and thinking how soon one is going to die,” said Rhoda, with an uncomfortable shrug.

“My dear!” exclaimed Mrs Dorothy, “when did you ever hear me say anything of the kind?”

“Why, that was what you meant, wasn’t it,” answered Rhoda, “when you talked about finding happiness in piety?”

“And when did I do that?”

“Just now, this minute back,” said Rhoda in surprise.

“My dear child, you strangely misapprehend me. I never spoke a word of finding happiness in piety; I spoke of finding it in God. And God is not sermons, nor chanting, nor death. He is life, and light, and love. I never think how soon I shall die. I often think how soon the Lord may come; but there is a vast difference between looking for the coming of a thing that you dread, and looking for the coming of a person whom you long to see.”

“But you will die, Mrs Dolly?”

“Perhaps, my dear. The Lord may come first; I hope so.”

“Oh dear!” said Rhoda. “But that means the world may come to an end.”

“Yes. The sooner the better,” replied the old lady.

“But you don’twantthe world to end, Mrs Dolly?”

“I do, my clear. I want the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.”

“Oh dear!” cried Rhoda again. “Why, Mrs Dolly, I can’t bear to think of it. It would be an end of everything I care about.”

“My dear,” said the old lady, gravely and yet tenderly, “if the Lord’s coming will put an end to everything you care about, that must be because you don’t care much for Him.”

“I don’t know anything about Him, except what we hear in church,” answered Rhoda uneasily.

“And don’t care for that?” softly responded her old friend.

Rhoda fidgeted for a moment, and then let the truth out.

“Well, no, Mrs Dolly, Idon’t. I know it sounds very wicked and shocking; but how can I, when ’tis all so far off? It doesn’t feel real, as you do, and Madam, and all the other people I know. I can’t tell how you make it real.”

“Hemakes it real, my child. ’Tis faith which sees God. How can you see Him without it? But I am not shocked, my dear. You have only told me what I knew before.”

“I don’t see how you knew,” said Rhoda uncomfortably; “and I don’t know how people get faith.”

“By asking the Lord for it,” said Mrs Dolly. “Phoebe, my child, is it a sorrowful thing to thee to think on Christ and His coming again?”

“Oh no!” was Phoebe’s warm answer. “You see, Madam, I haven’t anything else.”

“Dear child, thank God for it!” replied Mrs Dorothy softly. “‘Ton sort n’est pas à plaindre.’”

“I declare, if ’tis not four o’clock!” cried Rhoda, springing up, and perhaps not sorry for the diversion. “There, now! I meant you to finish your story, and we haven’t time left. Come along, Phoebe! We are going to look in a minute on Mrs Marcella, and then we must hurry home.”

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