upstairs. She was getting
more and more helpless about the house, unable to see after the stout
maid-of-all-work, who in her turn grumbled much at the large house, for
which one maid was not enough. Many altercations took place in
consequence between the mistress and servant.

"The ungrateful hussy hasn't even as many rooms to do as she had in the
High Street, when there was the 'prentices' beds to make," Mrs. Tozer
said indignantly to her husband; but Jane on her side pointed to the
length of passage, the stairs, the dining and drawing-rooms, where there
had once only been a parlour.

"Cook and 'ousemaid's little enough," said Jane; "there did ought to be
a man in this kind of 'ouse; but as there's only two in family,
shouldn't say nothing if I had a girl under me."

Things were gravitating towards this girl at the time of Phoebe's
arrival; but nothing had as yet been finally decided upon. Jane,
however, had bestirred herself to get the young lady's room ready with
something like alacrity. A young person coming to the house promised a
little movement and change, which was always something, and Jane had no
doubt that Phoebe would be on her side in respect to the "girl." "She'll
want waiting upon, and there'll always be sending of errands," Jane said
to herself. She knew by experience "what young 'uns is in a house."

There was something, perhaps, in all the preparations for her departure
which had thrown dust in Phoebe Beecham's eyes. She had been too
sharp-sighted not to see into her mother's qualms and hesitations about
her visit to Carlingford, and the repeated warnings of both parents as
to the "difference from what she had been accustomed to;" and she
thought she had fully prepared herself for what she was to encounter.
But probably the elaborate outfit provided by her mother and the
importance attached to her journey had to some degree obliterated this
impression, for it is certain that when Phoebe saw an old man in a shabby
coat, with a wisp of a large white neckcloth round his throat, watching
anxiously for the arrival of the train as it came up, she sustained a
shock which she had not anticipated. It was about five years since she
had seen her grandfather, an interval due to hazard rather than purpose,
though, on the whole, the elder Beechams had not been sorry to keep
their parents and their children apart. Phoebe, however, knew her
grandfather perfectly well as soon as she saw him, though he had not
perc