er eyes, for fear of meeting Mrs. Cheyne's cold, satirical glance;
and yet all the time she knew she was being watched. Mrs. Cheyne's
vigilant silence meant something.

If only her mother would come in! but she was shelling peas for
Dorothy. To think Nan should have failed her on such an occasion! even
Dulce would have been a comfort, though she was so easily frightened.
She started almost nervously when Mrs. Cheyne at last broke the
silence:

"Yes, you are decidedly paler,--a little thinner, I think, and that
after only a fortnight's work."

Phillis looked up a little indignantly at this; but she found Mrs.
Cheyne was regarding her not unkindly.

"I am well enough," she returned, rather ungraciously; "but we are not
used to so much confinement and the weather is hot. We shall grow
accustomed to it in time."

"You think restlessness is so easily subdued?" with a sneer.

"No; but I believe it can be controlled," replied poor Phillis, who
suffered more than any one guessed from this restraint on her sweet
freedom.

Mrs. Cheyne was right: even in this short time she was certainly paler
and thinner.

"You mean to persevere, then, in your moral suicide?"

"We mean to persevere in our duty," corrected Phillis, as she pinned
up a sleeve.

"Rather a high moral tone for a dressmaker to take: don't you think
so?" returned Mrs. Cheyne, in the voice Archie hated. The woman
certainly had a double nature: there was a twist in her somewhere.

This was too much for Phillis: she fired up in a moment.

"Why should not dressmakers take a high moral tone? You make me feel
glad I am one when you talk like that. This is our ambition,--Nan's
and mine, for Dulce is too young to think much about it,--to show by
our example that there is no degradation in work. Oh, it is hard!
First Mr. Drummond comes, and talks to us as though we were doing
wrong; and, then you, to cry down our honest labor, and call it
suicide! Is it suicide to work with these hands, that God has made
clever, for my mother?" cried Phillis; and her great gray eyes filled
up with sudden tears.

Mrs. Cheyne did not look displeased at the girl's outburst. If she had
led up to this point, she could not have received it more calmly.

"There, there! you need not excite yourself, child!" she said, more
gently. "I only wanted to know what you would say. So Miss Mewlstone
has been to you, I hear?--and Miss Middleton, too? but that's her
benevolence. Of course Miss Mat