"Has somebody been telling you I'm not good?"
"Did Nanna tell you?" he exclaimed. "Oh, dear, she promised she wouldn't!"
"No, darling; Nanna did not tell me. She would not break her promise to you."
"Then how did you know?"
She could hardly explain. "I guessed it," she said. "I saw you had been crying. Who was it that was finding fault with me?"
"Frank Bell; he's a new scholar." The name was not familiar.
"See here, darling, you must never trouble about me. You know I do things differently from some mothers, and they think it is wrong, but I think it is God's wish; so it does not much matter. You understand?"
"Yes." Then, after a pause: "And it has not anything to do with daddy not coming home?"
There is a sisterhood of Mary found the wide world over—women who have felt the sword pierce the soul, and in that instant Phebe felt afresh what membership with that sisterhood meant. But her child, at all costs, must not know of it.
"No, nothing at all," was her calm answer.