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Updated: May 27, 2025
Nixey, the tenant of a farmhouse, which lay at the head of a valley running up into the range of hills. Mrs. Nixey had given as much supervision to Phebe's motherless childhood as her father had permitted, in his jealous determination to be everything to his little daughter.
"If Phebe likes to marry him when I'm gone, I've no objection," he wrote, and then, with a feeling of irritation and bitterness, he rubbed out the words with the palm of his hand and turned his back upon Mrs. Nixey. All the next day Phebe remained very near to her father, leaving her house-work and painting to sit beside him on the low chair he had carved for her when she was a child.
It was a wholesome penance to him, perhaps, but it shook and troubled his soul to its very depths. His sin had ruined the poor weakminded drunkard, John Nixey, and hastened the end of dumb old Marlowe; these consequences of it must, at any time, have clouded his own after-life. But it had also wrought a baneful change in the spirit of the woman whom he loved.
He had never seen the man yet worthy of being the husband of his daughter, and Simon Nixey was not much to his mind. Still, he was a kind-hearted man, and well-to-do for his station; he kept a servant to wait on his mother, and he would do no less for his wife. Phebe would not be left desolate if she could make up her mind to marry him.
"Lost all his money!" repeated Nixey slowly and emphatically. There was a deep silence in the little house, while he gazed at her with open mouth and astonished eyes. Phebe had covered her face with her hands, forgetting him and everything else in the recollection of that bitter sorrow of hers nine months ago; worse than her sorrow now.
Why should she be afraid of that quiet, still form, which even in death was dearer to her than any other upon earth? But Mrs. Nixey walked beside her, next the coffin, when the small funeral procession wound its way slowly over the uplands to the country churchyard, where the deaf and dumb old wood-carver was laid in a grave beside his wife.
But Phebe could not be brought to say yes, though Nixey used every argument and persuasion he could think. He went away at last, in dudgeon, leaving her alone, but not so sad as before. The new volume of her life had already been opened. The next day Phebe locked up her house and rode down to Riversborough.
Patches of the universal medium, corrugated iron, indicate where one of Meisje's ninety-four-pound projectiles recently plumped in through the soft brick of the east wall end, and departed by the west frontage, leaving two holes that might have accommodated a chest of drawers, and carrying a window with it. Mrs. Nixey, the children, and the women of the staff inhabit a bombproof in the back-yard.
"I've been so used to your company as a ghost that when you are out of sight I fancy myself dreaming. I could not let Phebe go away lest I should feel that all this is not real. Did any one know you again?" "Not a soul," he answered; "how could they? Mrs. Nixey herself has no remembrance of me. There is no fear of my being known." "Then I want you to stay with me," said old Mr.
The dejected, miserable expression came back to his face, as his thoughts were recalled to the loss he had sustained, and he nodded his answer to Mrs. Nixey. "And left all to Phebe?" she wrote again. Again he nodded. It was all right so far, and Mrs. Nixey felt glad she had made sure of the ground.
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