"I don't know how it is," said Bessie, with a sigh, "but try as I may I can't get on with mother," and then there came something like a sob.

"Is there any fresh trouble?"

"Yesterday was mother's birthday," went on Bessie, in a low voice, "so I thought I would give her a little present; it's ever so long since I've done so. I bought a brooch--I could not afford a gold one--and when I gave it her--she said she never wore sham jewellery----" Bessie's voice was too choked to go on any further.

"Poor old girl!" said Phebe tenderly, taking hold of her hand; "never mind, you must keep on trying; love-work often goes slowly at first.

You'll see, she will wear that brooch on Sunday, mark my words."

"But that was not all she said," went on Bessie; "she said I was getting far too much of a saint for her; she wondered I had anything to do with such a wicked woman as she was,--but she believed it was only some clever trick I was up to,--mother even said I could act a sham to you, but she was not so easily gulled."

"Something had surely been worrying her."

"No, I don't suppose so, that's just mother. What is the good of me trying! I feel as if I'd never go in home again, that I do!"

"Do you think that would be acting a daughter's part?"

"No,"--very faintly.

"Then your course is very clear, dearie."

"Yes," with a deep sigh.

"Don't despair, Bessie, darling," said Phebe, stooping down and kissing the girl's brow. "It's a difficult piece of work you have to do, but there'll be all the more joy when it is completed."

There was a long silence between them, and the subject was not referred to again that evening. But Phebe sat long after Bessie had retired for the night thinking things over. The thought uppermost in her mind was this:

"I plead for visitors to go to zenanas in India, but what is my duty to Mrs. Marchant? All the years she has been my neighbour I have never even prayed for her, or tried to pa.s.s on to her any helpful message! Fancy that! And I call myself a Christian!"

When Nanna came into the room to bid her good-night, she said: "I wonder what her majesty is turning over so seriously in her mind!"

"Her majesty's subject," with special emphasis on the last word, "is thinking sadly of a neglected duty."

"Well!" exclaimed Nanna, laughing, "if the late lamented Mrs. Caudle had an eye for a bloater, my Phebe certainly has an eye for duties!"

"But, Nanna, when I tell you what it is, you will not laugh."

"Yes, I shall. I belong to the Guild of Gladness, and there's something to be glad about in everything,--if you look for it. If even this duty is a very solemn one, I am glad you have at last thought of it."

"I know I can never get you in a corner." And then she told Nanna her thoughts.

"You are quite right," was Nanna's reply, "we have both been to blame; we have thought so much of winning Bessie, we have lost sight of the mother."

"I shall make 'a dash for it,' as Bessie says, to-morrow. And trust for guidance, at the moment as to the right thing to say."

So the very next afternoon she went in to see her neighbour, and found her, of course, as busy--not as a bee, but, rather, as a cloud of dust.

"I wish I had your easy life, Mrs. Waring! I am never done," she exclaimed, sinking down into a chair with a load of freshly mangled towels in her arms. "And as for troubles,--it seems as if my life was made up of them."

"But I think you will acknowledge that I have had a few troubles lately, Mrs. Marchant, don't you think so?"

"Yes; but then troubles slip off some people like rain off a cabbage-leaf, but it soaks into me like it does into a sponge. I can't shake it off nohow. I don't know how it is, I'm sure," and she put her bundle down on her lap and began to smooth the towels with her hands.

"You are very highly strung," began Phebe.

"Yes, I know that, but you're about the first one that has said so; everybody seems to think I ought to be made of cast-iron. I'm sure the trouble that Bessie of mine's been to me n.o.body knows. And then to think she can be such an angel to you while to her own mother she can never be anything but a worry!--it's exasperating! It makes me wild when I think of it."

"I am sorry you feel like that. I know Bessie loves you dearly, and she is gaining so much more control that I thought you would have noticed a real improvement in her. Of course I know she is rather thoughtless--but there, you are proud of her for all that, and she is a girl any mother might be proud of!"

"I don't know about that," but a little pleasanter look came on to her face which seemed to contradict her words.

"But I did not come in to talk about Bessie," went on Phebe, "I came in to speak to you about yourself. I was saying to Nanna last night I did not think I had acted the neighbour's part to you; I have seldom ever been in even to ask how you were."

"I am sure it is very kind of you," put in Mrs. Marchant, and she really meant it. We all like to be made of some importance.

"I think housewives need all the cheer and sunshine they can get,"--Phebe suddenly paused, for Phill just at that moment came into the room, and Phebe then noticed, what she had not done before, that dinner for one was laid at the end of the table. Evidently Phill had come in with the intention of sitting down there; if so, it was "good-bye" to all private talk with his mother. After a few scattered remarks Phebe departed.

"You have not been long," remarked Nanna; "what success have you had?"

"Not any," answered Phebe; "just as I was drawing near to say something helpful Phill came in, and then my opportunity had gone. His arrival on the scene quite spoilt my little plan."

But had it? If Phebe had known a little more of the Unseen Hand which shapes our lives, she would not have been quite so sure her little plan was spoilt.

The sight of Mrs. Waring brought to Phill Marchant's mind a little train of thought he had been cogitating over lately, and as soon as she left he remarked to his mother: "Mrs. Waring has got something you haven't got, mother."

"What's that?" snapped the mother. "I'm as well off as she is any day.

She's got no jewellery to speak of, and goodness knows, her house is poor enough!"

"Oh, I don't mean that sort of thing."

"Well, what do you mean?"

"She never seems to get into fl.u.s.ters like you do, she seems to have something that steadies her, somehow; I hardly know how to put it."

Phill saw from the look on his mother's face he was getting on to dangerous ground, and that made it all the more difficult to clothe his thoughts in words.

"Fl.u.s.ters, indeed! She'd be fl.u.s.tered right enough if she had the worries I have."

"I should think she has more to worry her than you have," Phill ventured to remark.

"That shows all you know about it! Why, she came in this afternoon to try and cheer me up a bit--she as good as said so just before you came in."

"Yes, that's just it!" put in Phill eagerly, "she's got the knack of brightening things up for folks as well as for herself. She makes a fellow feel cheery like to be with her."

"You'd better go and live with her then, like your sister's done. It's a fine thing when children take to lecturing their mother! It would be far more becoming of you to try to lessen your mother's worries than to make out she is so much worse than her neighbours!"

After that Phill ate his dinner in silence, and took his departure as quickly as possible. But the thought of the difference between his mother and Mrs. Waring had taken still deeper root in his mind.

The next time he met Bessie he was specially gracious to her. Bessie did not know what to make of it.