'I don't mind hard work,' said Phyllis, 'if only I can do what he wants.'
So Phyllis is learning many things and preparing for the great work that has so wonderfully come to her. I think she will do it well, because she is not at all stupid really, and she has the gift of being sorry for sad people, and happy with happy ones. I think Sir Christopher chose well.
Some distant relations of Sir Christopher's have tried to make out that he was mad, and so couldn't do what he liked with his money. But when they took the matter to the judges to decide, hundreds and hundreds of people he had been good to and helped broke the promise of secrecy that he had always asked of them. And all England rang with the tale of his goodness, and of all the kind and clever things he had done for poor children all those long years, for the sake of his own little child. And the judges decided he was quite right to use his money in that way, and not mad at all. So the tiresome relations got nothing but lawyers' bills for their pains.
Phyllis only saw Sir Christopher once again. He sent for her when he was dying. They had moved his bed into the pearly room, and he lay facing the green curtain.
'If it seems too hard when the time comes,' he said, 'you need not do the work. Your father knows how to arrange that.'
'You needn't be afraid,' said Phyllis; 'it's the most splendid chance anyone ever had.'
'Kiss me, dear,' he said, 'and then draw back the curtain.'
But before Phyllis's hand had touched the green curtain he sat up in the bed and held out his arms towards the picture.
'Why, ladybird!' he cried, his face all alight with love and joy. 'Why, my little girl!'