“There are some of us that will not know what to do without you. If I am not very much mistaken, there is one person who––” but here the girl laid her hand hurriedly on her lips. “What! I am not to say that? Well, I will try to be good. But all the same this is not good-bye. Tell your mother from me that she will not have her girls for long. Captain Middleton has lost his heart, and is bent on making that pretty little sister of yours lose hers to; and as for you, Phillis––” but here Phillis stooped, and silenced her this time by a kiss.
“Ah, well!” continued Magdalene, after a moment’s silence, as she looked tenderly into the fair face before her; “so you have finished your little bit of play-work, and are going back into your young-ladyhood again?”
“It was not play-work!” returned Phillis, indignantly: “you say that to provoke me. Do you know,” she went on, earnestly, “that if we should have had to work all our lives as dressmakers, Nan and I would have done it, and never given in. We were making quite a fine business of it. We had more orders then we could execute; and you call that play? Confess, now, that you repent of that phrase!” 369
“Oh, I was only teasing you,” returned Magdalene, smiling. “I know how brave you were, and how terribly in earnest. Yes, Phillis, you are right; nothing would have daunted you; you would have worked without complaint all your life long, but for that red-haired Alcides of yours.”
“Dear Harry! how much we owe to him!” exclaimed Phillis.
“No, dear, you will owe your happiness to yourself,—the happiness,” as the girl looked at her in surprise, “that is coming to you and Dulce. It was because you were not like other girls—because you were brave, self-reliant gentlewomen, afraid of nothing but dishonor; not fearful of small indignities, or of other people’s opinions, but just taking up the work that lay to your hands, and going through with it—that you have won his heart: and, seeing this, how could he help loving you as he does?” But to this Phillis made no answer.
The next day was rather trying to them all. Phillis’s cheerfulness was a little forced, and for some time after they had left the Friary—with Grace and Archie waving their farewells from the road—she was very silent.
But no sooner had they crossed the threshold of Glen Cottage than their girlhood asserted itself. The sight of the bright snug rooms, with their new furniture, the conservatory, with its floral treasures, and Sir Harry’s cheery welcome, as he stood in the porch with Mrs. Mayne, was too much even for Phillis’s equanimity. In a few minutes their laughing faces were peering out of every window and into every cupboard.
“Oh, the dear, beautiful home! Isn’t it lovely of Harry to bring us back!” cried Phillis, oblivious of everything at that moment but her mother’s satisfied face.
In a few days they had settled down into their old life. It was too early for tennis while snowdrops and crocuses were peeping out of the garden borders. But in the afternoon friends dropped in in the old way, and gathered round the Challoner tea-table; and very soon—for Easter fell early that year—Dick showed himself among them, and then, indeed, Nan’s cup of happiness was full.