While Copernicus Droop was acquiring fame and fortune as a photographer, Rebecca and Phœbe were leading a quiet life in the city.
Phœbe was perfectly happy. For her this was the natural continuation of a visit which her father, Isaac Burton, had very unwillingly permitted her to pay to her dead mother's sister, Dame Goldsmith. She was very fond of both her aunt and uncle, and they petted and indulged her in every possible way.
Her chief source of happiness lay in the fact that the Goldsmiths favored the suit of Sir Guy Fenton, with whom she found herself deeply in love from the moment when he had so opportunely arrived to rescue the sisters from the rude horse-play of the Southwark mob.
Poor Rebecca, on the other hand, found herself in a most unpleasant predicament. She had shut herself up in her room on the first day of her arrival on discovering that her new hosts were ale drinkers, and she had insisted upon perpetuating this imprisonment when she had discovered that she would only be accepted on the footing of a servant.
Phœbe, who remembered Rebecca both as her nineteenth-century sister and as her sixteenth-century nurse and tiring-woman, thought this determination the best compromise under the circumstances, and explained to her aunt that Rebecca was subject to recurring fits of delusion, and that it was necessary at such times to humor her in all things.
On the very day of the visit of Francis Bacon to the Panchronicon, the two sisters were sitting together in their bed-room. Rebecca was at her knitting by the window and Phœbe was rereading a letter for the twentieth time, smiling now and then as she read.
"'Pears to amuse ye some," said Rebecca, dryly, looking into her sister's rosy face. "How'd it come? I ain't seen the postman sence we've ben here. Seems to me they ain't up to Keene here in London. We hed a postman twice a day at Cousin Jane's house."
"No, 'twas the flesher's lad brought it," said Phœbe.
Rebecca grunted crossly.
"I wish the land sake ye'd say 'butcher' when ye mean butcher, Phœbe," she said.