my efforts to keep serious; but I soon
found out that she was listening, and so I sang one song after another,
without pausing for any comment, and pretended not to notice when the
haggard weary eyes unclosed, and fixed themselves first on the flowers,
next on my face, and last and longest at the strip of lawn, with the bare
gooseberry bushes and the narrow path edged with privet.

When I had sung several ballads, I waited for a minute, and then
commenced Bishop Ken's evening hymn, but my voice shook a little as I saw
a sudden heaving under the bedclothes, and in another moment the large
slow tears coursed down Phoebe's thin face. It was hard to finish the
hymn, but I would not have dispensed with the Gloria.

'What is it, Phoebe?' I asked gently, when I had finished. 'I am sorry
that I have made you cry.'

'You need not be sorry,' she sobbed at last, with difficulty: 'it eases
my head, and I thought nothing would ever draw a tear from me again. I
was too miserable to cry, and they say--I have read it somewhere, in the
days when I used to read--that there is no such thing as a tear in hell.'

I tried not to look astonished at this strange speech. I must let this
poor creature talk, or how should I ever find out the root of her
disease? so I answered quietly that no doubt she was right, that in that
place of outer darkness there should be weeping, without tears, and a
gnashing of teeth, beside which our bitterest human sorrow would seem
like nothing.

'That is true,' she returned, with a groan; 'but, Miss Garston, hell has
begun for me here; for three years I have been in torment, and rightly
too,--and rightly too,--for I never was a good woman, never like Susan,
who read her Bible and went to church. Oh, she is a good creature, is
Susan.'

'I am glad to hear it, Phoebe: so, you see, your affliction, heavy as it
is,--and I am not saying it is not heavy,--is not without alleviation.
The Merciful Father, who has laid this cross upon you, has given you this
kind companion as a consoler. What a comfort you must be to each other!
what a divine work has been given to you both to do,--to bring up that
motherless little creature, who must owe her very life and happiness to
you!'

She lay and looked at me with an expression of bewildered astonishment,
and at this moment Miss Locke opened the door, carrying a little tea-tray
for her sister. I had a glimpse of Kitty curled up on the mat outside the
door, with the skipping-