Phillis received quite an ovation as soon as she crossed the threshold. Dulce, who was listening for her footsteps, rushed out into the little hall, and dragged her in, as though she were too weary to have any movement or volition of her own. And then Nan came up, in her calm elder-sisterly way, and put her arm round her, and hoped she was not so very tired, and there was so much to say, and so much to do, and she wanted her advice, and so on.

And on Nan's forehead lay a thoughtful pucker; and on the centre-table were sundry breadths of green silk, crisp-looking and faintly bronzed, like withered leaves with the sun on them.

"Oh, dear! has Miss Drummond been here in my absence?" asked Phillis, with the overwhelmed feeling of a beginner, who has not yet learned to separate and cla.s.sify, or the rich value of odd moments. "Three dresses to be done at once!"

"One at a time. But never mind Miss Drummond's this moment. Mother is safe in the store-cupboard for the next half-hour, and we want to know what you mean by your ridiculous message, 'Tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, not Squails.'

Dulce is dying of curiosity, and so am I."

"Yes; but she looks so hot and tired that she must refresh herself first." And Dulce placed on her sister's lap a plate of yellow plums, perfectly bedded in moss, which had come from the vicarage garden. And as Phillis enjoyed the dainty repast and poured out her morning's experiences in the ears of her astonished auditors, lo, the humiliation and the sting were forgotten, and only an intense sense of the humor of the situation remained.

It was Dulce whose pink cheeks were burning now.

"Oh, Phillis! how could you? It is too dreadful even to think about!

That fat old thing, too! Why, she is twice as big as Mrs. Squails!"

"Beggars cannot be choosers, my dear," replied Phillis, airily; for rest was pleasant, and the fruit was good, and it was so delicious to feel all that was over and she was safe in her nest again; and then the pleasure of talking it all over! "Do you know--?" she began, in a disconnected manner, and then sat and stared at her sisters with luminous gray eyes, until they begged to know what the new idea was.

"Oh, nothing," she replied, and colored a little. And then she blurted out, in an oddly-ashamed way, "it was talking to you two dears that put it in my head. But I could not help thinking that moment that if one is ever good enough to get to heaven, one of the greatest pleasures will be to talk about all our past miseries and difficulties, and how the angels helped us! and, though you may laugh at me,"--they were doing nothing of the kind, only admiring her with all their might,--"I have a kind of fancy that even my 'Tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, not Squails' episode may have a different look up there!"

"My dear," returned Nan, gently, for she loved all speeches of this sort, being a devout little soul and truly pious, "nothing was further from my thoughts than to laugh at you, for the more we think in this way the grander our work will appear to us. Mrs. Tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs may be fat and vulgar, but when you were measuring her and answering her so prettily--and I know how nicely you would speak, Phil--I think you were as brave as one of those old knights--I cannot remember their names--who set out on some lofty quest or other!"

"I suppose the child means Sir Galahad," observed Phillis, with a groan at Nan's ignorance. "Oh, Nannie, I wish I could say,--

"'My strength is as the strength of ten, Because my heart is pure;'"

and then she softly chanted,--for quotation never came amiss to her, and her head was crammed with choice selections from the poets,--

"'All armed I ride, whate'er betide, Until I find the Holy Grail.'"

"Yes, the Sangreal, or the Quest. It does not matter what, for it was only an allegory," returned Nan, who had plenty of ideas, only she confused them sometimes, and was not as clever in her definitions as Phillis. "It only meant that those grand old knights had some holy purpose and aim in their lives, for which they trained and toiled and fought. Don't you see?--the meaning is quite clear. We can have our Quest too."

"Bless her dear heart, if she is not travelling thousands of years and miles from Mrs. Tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs!" exclaimed Phillis, who never could be serious long. "Well, Nannie, I understand you, though you are a trifle vague. We will have our Quest and our unattainable standard; and I will be your maiden knight--yours and Dulce's.

"'How sweet are looks that ladies bend On whom their favors fall!

For them I'll battle till the end, To save from shame and thrall.'"

And when she had repeated this she rose, laughing, and said they were all a little demented; and what did they mean by wasting their time when there were three dresses to be cut out? and Dulce must have the work fixed for the sewing-machine.

For the next hour there was little talk, only the snipping sound of scissors and the rustling of silken breadths, and sometimes the swish and the tearing of sundry materials, and then the whirring and burning and tappings of Dulce's sewing machine, like a dozen or two of woodp.e.c.k.e.rs at work on an iron tree. And no one quoted any more poetry, for prose was heaped up everywhere about them, and their heads were full of business.

But in the afternoon, when things were in progress and looked promising, and Mrs. Challoner had had her nap, and was busy over some sleeves that they had given her to keep her quiet and satisfy her maternal conscience that she was helping her girls, Phillis did hear a little about Miss Drummond's visit. The sewing machine, which they worked by turns, had stopped for a time, and they were all three round the table, sewing and fixing as busily as possible: and Phillis, remembering Sir Galahad, dared not say she was tired, only she looked out on the lengthening shadows with delight, and thought about tea and an evening walk just to stretch her cramped muscles. And if one day seemed so long, how would a week of days appear before the blessed Sunday gave them a few hours of freedom?

It was at this moment that Nan, with fine tact, broke the silence that was good for work, but was apt to wax drowsy in time:

"Miss Milner's dress is getting on well. How fast you two girls work!

and mammie is doing the sleeves beautifully. Another afternoon you must let the work rest, mammie, and read to us, or Phillis will get restive. By the bye, Dulce, we have not told her a word about Miss Drummond's visit."

"No, indeed: was it not good of her to come so soon?" exclaimed Dulce.

"She told us she wanted to be our first customer, and seemed quite disappointed when we said that we were bound in honor and mere grat.i.tude to send Miss Milner's dress home first. 'Not that I am in a hurry for my dress, for n.o.body cares what I wear,' she said, quite cheerfully; 'but I wanted to be the first on your list.' I wish we could oblige her, for she is a nice, unaffected little thing, and I am beginning to like her, though she is a little fussy."

"But she was as meek as a lamb about her dress," added Nan, who was a first-rate needle-woman, and could work rapidly while she talked.

"Just fancy, Phil! she wanted to have a jacket with tabs and loose sleeves, just for comfort and coolness."

"Loose sleeves and a jacket!" almost gasped Phillis, for the princess skirts were then worn, and jackets were consigned to oblivion for the time being. "I hope you told her, Nan, that we had never worked for Mrs. Noah, neither had Mrs. Shem ever honored us by her custom."

"Well, no, Phillis; I was not quite so impertinent, and clever speeches of that sort never occur to me until you say them. But I told Miss Drummond that I could not consent to spoil her lovely dress in that way; and then she laughed and gave in, and owned she knew nothing about fashions, and that her sister Grace always ordered her clothes for her, because she chose such ugly things. She sat and chatted such a long time with us; she had only just gone when you came home."

"And she told us such a lot about this wonderful Grace," went on Dulce: "she says Archie quite worships her.--Well, mammie," as Mrs.

Challoner poised her needle in mid-air and regarded her youngest daughter with unfeigned astonishment, "I am only repeating Miss Drummond's words; she said 'Archie.'"

"But, my dear, there was no need to be so literal," returned Mrs.

Challoner, reprovingly; for she was a gentlewoman of the old school, and nothing grieved her more than slipshod English or any idiom or idiotcy of modern parlance in the mouths of her bright young daughters: to speak of any young man except d.i.c.k without the ceremonious prefix was a heinous misdemeanor in her eyes. Dulce would occasionally trespa.s.s, and was always rebuked with much gravity. "You could have said 'her brother,' could you not?"

"Oh, mammie, I am sure Providence intended you for an old maid, and you have not fulfilled your destiny," retorted Dulce, who was rarely awed by her mother's solemnity. "All that fuss because I said 'Archie!' Oh, I forgot, that name is sacred: the Rev. Archibald Drummond adores his sister Grace."

"And she must be very nice," returned Mrs. Challoner with an indulgent smile at her pet Dulce. "I am sure, from what Miss Drummond told us this morning, that she must be a most superior person. Why, Phillis, she teaches all her four younger sisters, and one of them is sixteen.

Miss Drummond says she is never out of the school-room, except for an hour or two in the evening, when her father and brothers come home.

There are two more brothers, I think she said. Dear what a large family! and Miss Drummond hinted that they were not well off."

"I should like to know that Grace," began Phillis; and then she shook her head reflectively. "No, depend upon it, we should be disappointed in her: family paragons are generally odious to other folk. Most likely she wears spectacles, and is a thin thread-papery sort of person."

"On the contrary, she is a sweet-looking girl, with large melancholy eyes; for Miss Drummond showed us her photograph. So much for your imagination, Phil?" and Dulce looked triumphant. "And she is only twenty-two, and, though not pretty, just the sort of face one could love."

"Some people's swans turn out to be geese in the end," remarked Phillis, provokingly; but she registered at the same time a mental resolve that she would cross-examine Mr. Drummond on the earliest opportunity about this wonderful sister of his. Oh, it was no marvel if he did look down on them when they had not got brains enough to earn their living except in this way! and Phillis stuck her needle into Miss Milner's body-lining so viciously that it broke.

The sharp click roused Nan's vigilance, and she looked up, and was at once full of pity for Phillis's pale face.

"You are tired, Phil, and so are we all," she said, brightly; "and, as it is our first day of work, we will not overdo ourselves. Mammie, if you will make the tea, we will just tidy up, and look out the patterns for you to match the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs and b.u.t.tons to-morrow;" for this same business of matching was rather hailed by Mrs. Challoner as a relief and amus.e.m.e.nt.

Phillis grumbled a little over this additional labor, though, at the same time, no one worked harder than she; but she was careful to explain that it was her right, as a freeborn Britoness, to grumble, and that it was as much a relief to her peculiar const.i.tution as a good long yawn is to some people.

"And it answers two purposes," as she observed; "for it airs the lungs, and relieves the mind, and no one takes any more notice than if I set the wind blowing. And thankful I am, and every mother's child of us, that Dorothy is approaching this room with her dust-pan and brush.

Dorothy, I have a nice little sum for you to do. How many snippets of green and black silk go to a dust-pan? Count them, and subtract all the tacking-thread, and Dulce's pins."

"Phillis, you are just feverish from overfatigue and sitting so long in one place, for you are used to running about." And Nan took her by the shoulders, and marched her playfully to the small parlor, where Mrs. Challoner was waiting for them.

"Come, girls!" she said, cheerfully. "Dorothy has baked your favorite little cakes, and there are new-laid eggs for those who are hungry; and I am sure you all earned your tea, darlings. And, oh, Phillis! how tired you look!" And Mrs. Challoner looked round on each face in turn, in the unwise but loving way of mothers.

This was too much for Phillis; and she interlaced her fingers and put them suddenly and sternly over her mother's eyes.

"Now, mammie, promise."

"Phillis, my dear, how can you be so absurd!" but Mrs. Challoner strove in vain to release herself. Phillis's fingers had iron tenacity in them when she chose.

"A thing like this must be nipped in the bud," p.r.o.nounced Phillis, apostrophizing her laughing sisters. "You must not look at us in that fashion every evening, as though we were sheep in a pen, or rabbits for sale. You will be weighing us next; and my nerves will not stand it. No, mother; here I strike. I will not be looked at in that manner."

"But, Phillis--Oh, you nonsensical child!"