ead, I'm afraid,' she said, in a gentle sympathetic
voice. But it was too much for Phillis.

'The thread is bad--everything is bad--I am so tired of it all!' And
she put down her work, and hastily left the room. I do not suppose that
in all her life Phillis had ever shown so much temper before. In many a
family the tone, the manner, would not have been noticed; but here it
fell with a sharp surprise upon the sweet, calm atmosphere of home. The
minister put down ruler and book, and pushed his spectacles up to his
forehead. The mother looked distressed for a moment, and then smoothed
her features and said in an explanatory tone,--'It's the weather, I
think. Some people feel it different to others. It always brings on a
headache with me.' She got up to follow her daughter, but half-way to
the door she thought better of it, and came back to her seat. Good
mother! she hoped the better to conceal the unusual spirt of temper, by
pretending not to take much notice of it. 'Go on, minister,' she said;
'it is very interesting what you are reading about, and when I don't
quite understand it, I like the sound of your voice.' So he went on,
but languidly and irregularly, and beat no more time with his ruler to
any Latin lines. When the dusk came on, early that July night because
of the cloudy sky, Phillis came softly back, making as though nothing
had happened. She took up her work, but it was too dark to do many
stitches; and she dropped it soon. Then I saw how her hand stole into
her mother's, and how this latter fondled it with quiet little
caresses, while the minister, as fully aware as I was of this tender
pantomime, went on talking in a happier tone of voice about things as
uninteresting to him, at the time, I very believe, as they were to me;
and that is saying a good deal, and shows how much more real what was
passing before him was, even to a farmer, than the agricultural customs
of the ancients.

I remember one thing more,--an attack which Betty the servant made upon
me one day as I came in through the kitchen where she was churning, and
stopped to ask her for a drink of buttermilk.

'I say, cousin Paul,' (she had adopted the family habit of addressing
me generally as cousin Paul, and always speaking of me in that form,)
'something's amiss with our Phillis, and I reckon you've a good guess
what it is. She's not one to take up wi' such as you,' (not
complimentary, but that Betty never was, even to those for whom she
felt