ishness. "That is why I am here
to-night,--just to inquire after your foot and explain things."

"Well?" still more impatiently, for this woman was a spoiled child,
and hated to be thwarted, and was undisciplined and imperious enough
to ruin all her own chances of happiness.

"I told you that we were very poor," went on Phillis, in a sweet and
steady voice; "but that did not seem to impress you much, and I
thought how noble that was,"--catching her breath an instant; "but it
will make a difference and shock you dreadfully, as it did Mr.
Drummond, when I tell you we are dressmakers,--Nan and Dulce and I: at
least that will be our future occupation."

"Ah, just so!" ejaculated Miss Mewlstone; but she said it with her
lips far apart, and a mistiness came into her sleepy blue eyes.
Perhaps, though she was stout and middle-aged and breathed a little
too heavily at times, she remembered--long ago when she was young and
poor and had to wage a bitter war with the world--when she ate the dry
bread and drank the bitter water of dependence and felt herself ill
nourished by such unpalatable sustenance. "Oh, just so, poor thing!"
And a little round tear dripped on to the ball of scarlet fleecy
wool.

But Mrs. Cheyne listened to the announcement in far different mood.
There was an incredulous stare at Phillis, as though she suspected her
of a joke; and then she laughed, a dry, harsh laugh, that was not
quite pleasant to hear.

"Oh, this is droll, passing droll!" she said, and leaned back on her
cushions, and drew her Indian cashmere round her and frowned a
little.

"I am glad you find it so," returned Phillis, who was nonplussed at
this, and did not know what to say, and was a little angry in
consequence; and then she got up from her chair with a demonstration
of spirit. "I am glad you find it so; but to us it is sad
earnestness!"

"What! are you going?" asked Mrs. Cheyne, with a keen glance through
her half-shut eyes at poor Phillis standing so tall and straight
before her. "And you have not told me the reason for taking so strange
a step!"

"The reason lies in our poverty and paucity of resources," was
Phillis's curt reply.

"It is not to make a sensation, then? no, I did not mean that," as
Phillis shot an indignant glance at her,--"not exactly; but there is
no knowing what the emancipated girl will do. Of course I have no
right to question, who was a stranger to you four-and-twenty hours
ago, and had never heard the