ll it ain't for me."

"Mr. Cotsdean," said Phoebe, impressively, "you don't know, I suppose,
that Mr. May had a fit when he received your note last night?"

"Lord help us! Oh! God forgive me, I've done him wrong, poor gentleman,
if that's true."

"It is quite true; he is very, very ill; he can't give you any advice,
or assist you in any way, should grandpapa be unkind. He could not even
understand if you told him what has happened."

Once more Cotsdean's knees knocked against each other in the shadow of
the counter. His very lips trembled as he stood regarding his strange
visitor with scared and wondering eyes.

"Now listen, please," said Phoebe, earnestly; "if any one comes to you
about the bill to-day, don't say anything about _him_. Say you got
it--in the way of business--say anything you please, but don't mention
_him_. If you will promise me this, I will see that you don't come to
any harm. Yes, I will; you may say I am not the sort of person to know
about business, and it is quite true. But whoever comes to you remember
this--if you don't mention Mr. May, I will see you safely through it; do
you understand?"

Phoebe leant across the counter in her earnestness. She was not the kind
of person to talk about bills, or to be a satisfactory security for a
man in business; but Cotsdean was a poor man, and he was ready to catch
at a straw in the turbid ocean of debt and poverty which seemed closing
round him. He gave the required promise with his heart in his mouth.

Then Phoebe returned down the street. Her fatigue began to tell upon her,
but she knew that she dared not give in, or allow that she was fatigued.
However heavy with sleep her eyes might be, she must keep awake and
watchful. Nothing, if she could help it, must so much as turn the
attention of the world in Mr. May's direction. By this time she was much
too deeply interested to ask herself why she should do so much for Mr.
May. He was her charge, her burden, as helpless in her hands as a child;
and nobody but herself knew anything about it. It was characteristic of
Phoebe's nature that she had no doubt as to being perfectly right in the
matter, no qualm lest she should be making a mistake. She felt the
weight upon her of the great thing she had undertaken to do, with a
certain half-pleasing sense of the solemnity of the position and of its
difficulties; but she was not afraid that she was going wrong or
suffering her fancy to stray further than the facts