‘Dear child,’ she said, ‘there is no need for that feeling. Parish work, at least in a lay family, must depend on the amount of home duty. In the last years of my dear mother’s life I had to let everything go, and I know it is not easy to resume, still less to begin, but you will be glad to have done so, and will find it a great comfort.’
‘If it be my duty, I must try,’ said Phœbe, dejectedly, ‘and I suppose it is. Will you come and show me what to do? I never went into a cottage in my life.’
I have spoken too soon! thought Honor; yet Robert urged me, and besides the evil of neglecting the poor, the work will do her good; but it breaks one’s heart to see this meek, mournful obedience.
‘While we are alone,’ continued Phœbe, ‘I can fix times, and do as I please, but I cannot tell what Mervyn may want me to do when he is at home.’
‘Do you expect that he will wish you to go out with him?’ asked Honora.
‘Not this autumn,’ she answered; ‘but he finds it so dull at home, that I fully expect he will have his friends to stay with him.’
‘Phœbe, let me strongly advise you to keep aloof from your brother’s friends. When they are in the house, live entirely in the schoolroom. If you begin at once as a matter of course, he will see the propriety, and acquiesce. You are not vexed?’
‘Thank you, I believe it is all right. Robert will be the more at ease about us. I only do not like to act as if I distrusted Mervyn.’
‘It would not be discreet for any girl so young as you are to be entertaining her brother’s sporting friends. You could hardly do so without acquiring the same kind of reputation as my poor Lucy’s Rashe, which he would not wish.’
‘Thank you,’ said Phœbe more heartily. ‘You have shown me the way out of a difficulty. I need not go into company at all this winter, and after that, only with our old country neighbours.’