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"Her cousin, and from the country?" said the gentleman, bowing and smiling. "In that case we must be better acquainted, for you are my own little kinswoman likewise. Let me see, you must be Phoebe, the only child of my dear Cousin Arthur. I am your kinsman, my dear. Surely you must have heard of Judge Pyncheon?" Phoebe curtsied, and the judge bent forward to bestow a kiss on his young relative.
Well! this is nice work, Phoebe, and I'm sure I'm very much beholden to yo'. And here's five sticks o' barley-sugar, one for every stitch, and thank you kindly, Mrs. Moorsom, too. Philip took the handkerchief and hoped he had made honourable amends for his want of recognition.
For an instant she laid her hand on his arm and they were about to catch step with the music when suddenly she swung around into the green tangle beyond her and reached out her hand to draw him after her. "Pray, David, pray," said Phoebe as they glided over the polished floor. "I am," David whispered back as his arms tightened. "I can't think of anything but 'Now I lay me' but won't it help?"
When Phoebe broke into a peal of merry laughter at what she read, he would now and then laugh for sympathy, but oftener respond with a troubled, questioning look. If a tear a maiden's sunshiny tear over imaginary woe dropped upon some melancholy page, Clifford either took it as a token of actual calamity, or else grew peevish, and angrily motioned her to close the volume. And wisely too!
Phoebe answered petulantly, "I'm turned out of the house; I don't care what you tell her!" Jervy again addressed the old woman, still keeping his information in reserve. "Why do you want to know where he lives?" "He owes me money," said Mrs. Sowler. Jervy looked hard at her, and emitted a long low whistle, expressive of blank amazement.
"You wished to see me, Doctor Strong?" Miss Phoebe began. She was half pleased, half ruffled, at being summoned in this imperious way. "Yes oh, yes," answered Geoffrey, vaguely. "Come in, please, Miss Blyth. Sit here, in my chair. Did you know there was a secret pocket in this chair? Very curious thing!" "I was aware of it," said Miss Phoebe, with dignity.
It was not, however, any feeling of this difference which made Phoebe draw herself back instinctively after the first start of recognition. Across her mind, even while she held out her hand to the stranger, there flashed a sudden recollection of her grandmother and her grandfather, and all the homely belongings which he, a minister of the connection, could not be kept in ignorance of.
Phoebe had found it difficult to persuade her that it was now two o'clock in the morning, and that they were all, no doubt, sleeping in their beds. She passed a wretched night; and the next day, after Philip had succeeded in composing her, a strange gentleman was brought to her to prescribe for her. This revived her terrors.
Phoebe, sweep up the hearth. Hang that curtain straight. Give me that letter, no, not that, the large letter. There! now put it into my knitting-basket. Make haste down, Phoebe, to be ready to open the door for Mrs Rowland. Don't keep her waiting a moment on the steps." "She has not got to the steps yet," said George. "She is talking to Mrs Grey.
Luke Marks, dressed in his ill-fitting Sunday clothes, looked by no means handsomer than in his every-day apparel; but Phoebe, arrayed in a rustling silk of delicate gray, that had been worn about half a dozen times by her mistress, looked, as the few spectators of the ceremony remarked, "quite the lady."
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