Nan overslept herself, and was rather late the next morning; but as she entered the parlor, with an exclamation of penitence for her tardiness, she found her little speech was addressed to the empty walls. A moment after, a shadow crossed the window, and Phillis came in.

She went up to Nan and kissed her, and there was a gleam of fun in her eyes.

“Oh, you lazy girl!” she said; “leaving me all the hard work to do. Do you know, I have been around to the Library, and have had it all out with Miss Milner; and in the Steyne I met the clergyman again, and would you believe it; he looked quite disappointed because you were not there!”

“Nonsense!” returned Nan, sharply. She never liked this sort of joking speeches: they seemed treasonable to Dick.

“Oh, but he did,” persisted Phillis, who was a little excited and reckless after her morning’s work. “He threw me a disparaging glance, which said, as plainly as possible, ‘Why are you not the other one?’ That comes from having a sister handsomer than one’s self.”

“Oh, Phillis! when people always think you so nice, and when you are so clever!”

Phillis got up and executed a little courtesy in the prettiest way, and then she sank down upon her chair in pretended exhaustion.

“What I have been through! But I have come out of it alive. Confess, now, there’s a dear, that you could not have done it!”

“No; indeed,” with an alarmed air. “Do you really mean to say that you actually told Miss Milner what we meant to do?”

“I told her everything. There, sit down and begin your breakfast, Nan, or we shall never be ready. I found her alone in the shop. Thank goodness, that Miss Masham was not there. I have taken a dislike to that simpering young person, and would rather make a dress for Mrs. Squails any day than for her. I told her the truth, without a bit of disguise. Would you believe it, the good creature actually cried about it! she quite upset me too. ’Such young ladies! dear, dear: one does not often see such,’ she kept saying over and over again. And then she put out her hand and stroked my dress, and said, ’Such a beautiful fit, too; and to think you have made it yourself! such a clever young lady! Oh, dear! whatever will Mr. Drummond and Miss Mattie say?’ Stupid old thing! as though we cared what he said!”

“Oh, Phillis! and she cried over it?”

“She did indeed. I am not exaggerating. Two big round tears rolled down her cheeks. I could have kissed her for them. And then she made me sit down in the little room behind the shop, where she was having her breakfast, and poured me out a cup of tea and ” But here Nan interrupted her, and there was a trace of anxiety in her manner.

“Poured you out a cup of tea! Miss Milner! And you drank it!”

“Of course I drank it; it was very good, and I was thirsty.”

But here Nan pounced upon her unexpectedly, and dragged her to the window.

“Your fun is only make-believe: there is no true ring about it. Let me see your eyes. Oh, Phil, Phil! I thought so! You have been crying, too!”

Phillis looked a little taken aback. Nan was too sharp for her. She tried to shake herself free a little pettishly.

“Well, if I choose to make a fool of myself for once in my life, you need not be silly about it; the old thing was so upsetting, and and it was so hard to get it out.” Phillis would not have told for worlds how utterly she had broken down over that task of hers; how the stranger’s sympathy had touched so painful a chord that, before she knew what she was doing, she had laid her head down on the counter and was crying like a baby, all the more that she had so bravely pent up her feelings all these days that she might not dishearten her sisters.

But, as Nan petted and praised her, she did tell how good Miss Milner had been to her.

“Fancy a fat old thing like that having such fine feelings,” she said, with an attempt to recover her sprightliness. “She was as good as a mother to me, made me sit in the easy-chair, and brought me some elder-flower water to bathe my eyes, and tried to cheer me up by saying that we should have plenty of work. She has promised not to tell any one just yet about us; but when we are really in the Friary she will speak to people and recommend us: and ” here Phillis gave a little laugh “we are to make up a new black silk for her that her brother has just sent her. Oh, dear, what will mother say to us, Nan?” And Phillis looked at her in an alarmed, beseeching way, as though in sore need of comfort.

Nan looked grave; but there was no hesitation in her answer:

“I am afraid it is too late to think of that now, Phil: it has to be done, and we must just go through with it.”

“You are right, Nanny darling, we must just go through with it,” agreed Phillis; and then they went on with their unfinished breakfast, and after that the business of the day began.

It was late in the evening when they reached home. Dulce who was at the gate looking out for them, nearly smothered them with kisses.

“Oh, you dear things! how glad I am to get you back,” she said, holding them both. “Have you really only been away since yesterday morning? It seems a week at least.”

“You ridiculous child! as though we believe that! But how is mother?”

“Oh, pretty well: but she will be better now you are back. Do you know,” eying them both very gravely, “I think it was a wise thing of you to go away like that? it has shown me that mother and I could not do without you at all: we should have pined away in those lodgings; it has quite reconciled me to the plan,” finished Dulce, in a loud whisper that reached her mother’s ears.

“What plan? What are you talking about, Dulce? and why do you keep your sisters standing in the hall?” asked Mrs. Challoner, a little irritably. But her brief nervousness vanished at the sight of their faces: she wanted nothing more, she told herself, but to see them round her, and hear their voices.

She grew quite cheerful when Phillis told her about the new papers, and how Mrs. Crump was to clean down the cottage, and how Crump had promised to mow the grass and paint the greenhouse, and Jack and Bobbie were to weed the garden-paths.

“It is a perfect wilderness now, mother: you never saw such a place.”

“Never mind, so that it will hold us, and that we shall all be together,” she returned, with a smile. “But Dulce talked of some plan: you must let me hear it, my dears; you must not keep me in the dark about anything. I know we shall all have to work,” continued the poor lady; “but if we be all together, if you will promise not to leave me, I think I could bear anything.”

“Are we to tell her!” motioned Nan with her lips to Phillis; and as Phillis nodded, “Yes,” Nan gently and quietly began unfolding their plan.

But, with all her care and all Phillis’s promptings, the revelation was a great shock to Mrs. Challoner; in her weakened state she seemed hardly able to bear it.

Dulce repented bitterly her incautious whisper when she saw her sisters’ tired faces, and their fruitless attempts to soften the effects of such a blow. For a little while, Mrs. Challoner seemed on the brink of despair; she would not listen; she abandoned herself to lamentations; she became so hysterical at last that Dorothy was summoned from the kitchen and taken into confidence.

“Mother, you are breaking our hearts,” Nan said, at last. She was kneeling at her feet, chafing her hands, and Phillis was fanning her; but she pushed them both away from her with weak violence.

“It is I whose heart is breaking! Why must I live to see such things? Dorothy, do you know my daughters are going to be dressmakers? my daughters, who are Challoners, who have been delicately nurtured, who might hold up their heads with any one?”

“Dorothy, hold your tongue!” exclaimed Phillis, peremptorily. “You are not to speak; this is for us to decide, and no one else. Mammy, you are making Nan look quite pale: she is dreadfully tired, and so am I. Why need we decide anything to-night? Every one is upset and excited, and when that is the case one can never arrive at any proper conclusion. Let us talk about it to-morrow, when we are rested.” And, though Mrs. Challoner would not allow herself to be comforted, Nan’s fatigue and paleness were so visible to her maternal eyes that they were more eloquent than Phillis’s words.

“I must not think only of myself. Yes, yes, I will do as you wish. There will be time enough for this sort of talk to-morrow. Dorothy, will you help me? The young ladies are tired; they have had a long journey. No, my dear, no,” as Dulce pressed forward; “I would rather have Dorothy.” And, as the old servant gave them a warning glance, they were obliged to let her have her way.

“Mammy has never been like this before,” pouted Dulce, when they were left alone. “She drives us away from her as though we had done something purposely to vex her.”

“It is because she cannot bear the sight of us to-night,” returned Phillis, solemnly. “It is worse for her than for us; a mother feels things for her children more than for herself; it is nature, that is what it is,” she finished philosophically; “but she will be better to-morrow.” And after this the miserable little conclave broke up.

Mrs. Challoner passed a sleepless night, and her pillow was sown with thorns. To think of the Challoners falling so low as this! To think of her pretty Nan, her clever, bright Phillis, her pet Dulce coming to this; “oh, the pity of it!” she cried in the dark hours, when vitality runs lowest, and thoughts seem to flow involuntarily towards a dark centre.

But with the morning came sunshine, and her girl’s faces, a little graver than usual, perhaps, but still full of youth and the brightness of energy; and the sluggish nightmare of yesterday’s grief began to fade a little.

“Now, mammy, you are not going to be naughty to-day!” was Dulce’s morning salutation as she seated herself on the bed.

Mrs. Challoner smiled faintly:

“Was I very naughty last night, Dulce?”

“Oh, as bad as possible. You pushed poor Nan and Phillis away, and would not let any one come near you but that cross old Dorothy, and you never bade us good-night; but if you promise to be good, I will forgive you and make it up,” finished Dulce, with those light butterfly kisses to which she was addicted.

“Now, Chatterbox, it is my turn,” interrupted Phillis; and then she began a carefully concocted little speech, very carefully drawn out to suit her mother’s sensitive peculiarities.

She went over the old ground patiently point by point. Mrs. Challoner shuddered at the idea of letting lodgings.

“I knew you would agree with us,” returned Phillis, with a convincing nod; and then she went on to the next clause.

Mrs. Challoner argued a great deal about the governess scheme. She was quite angry with Phillis, and seemed to suffer a great deal of self-reproach, when the girl spoke of their defective education and lack of accomplishments. Nan had to come to her sister’s rescue; but the mother was slow to yield the point:

“I don’t know what you mean. My girls are not different from other girls. What would your poor father say if he were alive? It is cruel to say this to me, when I stinted myself to give you every possible advantage, and I paid Miss Martin eighty pounds a year,” she concluded, tearfully, feeling as though she were the victim of a fraud.

She was far more easily convinced that going out as companions would be impracticable under the circumstances. “Oh, no, that will never do!” she cried, when the two little rooms with Dulce were proposed; and after this Phillis found her task less difficult. She talked her mother over at last to reluctant acquiescence. “I never knew how I came to consent,” she said, afterwards, “but they were too much for me.”

“We cannot starve. I suppose I must give in to you,” she said, at last; “but I shall never hold up my head again.” And she really believed what she said.

“Mother, you must trust us,” replied Phillis, touched by this victory she had won. “Do you know what I said to Dulce? Work cannot degrade us. Though we are dressmakers, we are still Challoners. Nothing can make us lose our dignity and self-respect as gentlewomen.”

“Other people will not recognize it,” returned her mother, with a sigh. “You will lose caste. No one will visit you. Among your equals you will be treated as inferiors. It is this that bows me to the earth with shame.”

“Mother, how can you talk so?” cried Nan, in a clear, indignant voice. “What does it matter if people do not visit us? We must have a world of our own, and be sufficient for ourselves, if we can only keep together. Is not that what you have said to us over and over again? Well, we shall be together, we shall have each other. What does the outside world matter to us after all?”

“Oh, you are young; you do not know what complications may arise,” replied Mrs. Challoner, with the gloomy forethought of middle age. She thought she knew the world better than they, but in reality she was almost as guileless and ignorant as her daughters. “Until you begin, you do not know the difficulties that will beset you,” she went on.

But notwithstanding this foreboding speech, she was some what comforted by Nan’s words: “they would be together!” Well, if Providence chose to inflict this humiliation and afflictive dispensation on her, it could be borne as long as she had her children around her.

Nan made one more speech, a somewhat stern one for her.

“Our trouble will be a furnace to try our friends. We shall know the true from the false. Only those who are really worth the name will be faithful to us.”

Nan was thinking of Dick; but her mother misunderstood her, and grew alarmed.

“You will not tell the Paines and the other people about here what you intend to do, surely? I could not bear that! no, indeed, I could not bear that!”

“Do not be afraid, dear mother,” returned Nan, sadly, “we are far too great cowards to do such a thing, and, after all, there is no need to put ourselves to needless pain. If the Maynes were here we might not be able to keep it from them, perhaps, and so I am thankful they are away.”

Nan said this quite calmly, though her mother fixed her eyes upon her in a most tenderly mournful fashion. She had quite forgotten their Longmead neighbors, but now, as Nan recalled them to her mind, she remembered Mr. Mayne, and her look had become compassionate.

“It will be all over with those poor children,” she thought to herself: “the father will never allow it, never; and I cannot wonder at him.” And then her heart softened to the memory of Dick, whom she had never thought good enough for Nan, for she remembered now with a sore pang that her pride was laid low in the dust, and that she could not hope now that her daughters would make splendid matches: even Dick would be above them, though his father had been in trade, and though he had no grandfather worth mentioning.

A few days after their return from Hadleigh, there was an other long business interview with Mr. Trinder, in which every thing was settled. A tenant had already been found for the cottage. A young couple, on the eve of their marriage, who had long been looking for a suitable house in the neighborhood had closed at once with Mr. Trinder’s offer, and had taken the lease off their hands. The gentleman was a cousin of the Paines and, partly for the convenience of the in-coming tenants, and partly because the Challoners wished to move as soon as possible, there was only a delay of a few weeks before the actual flitting.

It would be impossible to describe the dismay of the neighborhood when the news was circulated.

Immediately after their return from Hadleigh, Nan and Phillis took counsel together, and, summoning up their courage, went from one to another of their friends and quietly announced their approaching departure.

“Mother has had losses, and we are now dreadfully poor, and we are going to leave Glen Cottage and go down to a small house we have at Hadleigh,” said Nan, who by virtue of an additional year of age was spokeswoman on this occasion. She had fully rehearsed this little speech, which she intended to say at every house in due rotation. “We will not disguise the truth; we will let people know that we are poor, and then they will not expect impossibilities,” she said, as they walked down the shady roads towards the Paines’ house, for the Paines were their most intimate friends and had a claim to the first confidence.

“I think that will be sufficient; no one has any right to know more,” she continued, decidedly, fully determined that no amount of coaxing and cross-examination should wring from her one unnecessary word.

But she little knew how difficult it would be to keep their own counsel. The Paines were not alone: they very seldom were. Adelaide Sartoris was there, and the younger Miss Twentyman, and a young widow, a Mrs. Forbes, who was a distant connection of Mrs. Paine.

Nan was convinced that they had all been talking about them, for there was rather an embarrassed pause as she and Phillis entered the room. Carrie looked a little confused as she greeted them.

Nan sat down by Mrs. Paine, who was rather deaf, and in due time made her little speech. She was rather pale with the effort, and her voice faltered a little, but every word was heard at the other end of the room.

“Leave Glen Cottage, my dear? I can’t have heard you rightly. I am very deaf, to-day, very. I think I must have caught cold.” And Mrs. Paine turned a mild face of perplexity on Nan; but, before she could reiterate her words, Carrie was on the footstool at her feet, and Miss Sartoris, with a grave look of concern on her handsome features, was standing beside her:

“Oh, Nan! tell us all about it! Of course we saw something was the matter. Dulce was so strange that afternoon; and you have all been keeping yourselves invisible for ever so long.”

“There is very little to tell,” returned Nan, trying to speak cheerfully. “Mother has had bad news. Mr. Gardiner is bankrupt, and all our invested money is gone. Of course we could not go on living at Glen Cottage. There is some talk, Carrie, of your cousin, Mr. Ibbetson, coming to look at it: it will be nice for us if he could take the lease off our hands, and then we should go down to the Friary.”

“How I shall hate to see Ralph there! not but what it will suit him and Louisa well enough, I dare say. But never mind him: I want to know all about yourselves,” continued Carrie, affectionately. “This is dreadful, Nan! I can hardly believe it. What are we to do without you? and where is the Friary? and what is it like? and what will you do with yourselves when you get there?”

“Yes, indeed, that is what we want to know,” agreed Miss Sartoris, putting her delicately-gloved hand on Nan’s shoulder; and then Sophy Paine joined the little group, and Mrs. Forbes and Miss Twentyman left off talking to Phillis, and began listening; with all their might. Now it was that Nan began to foresee difficulties.

“The Friary is very small,” she went on, “but it will just hold us and Dorothy. Dorothy is coming with us, of course. She is old, but she works better than some of the young ones. She is a faithful creature ”

But Carrie interrupted her impatiently:

“But, Nan, what will you do with yourselves? Hadleigh is a nice place, I believe. Mamma, we must all go down there next summer, and stay there, you shall come with us, Adelaide, and then we shall be able to cheer these poor things up; and Nan, you and Phillis must come and stay with us. We don’t mean to give you up like this. What does it matter about being poor? We are all old friends together. You shall give us tea at the Friary; and I dare say there are tennis-grounds at Hadleigh, and we will have nice times together.”

“Of course we will come and see you,” added Miss Sartoris, with a friendly pressure of Nan’s shoulder; but the poor girl only colored up and looked embarrassed, and then it was that Phillis, who was watching her opportunity, struck in:

“You are all very good; but, Carrie, I don’t believe you understand Nan one bit. When people lose their money they have to work. We shall all have to put our shoulder to the wheel. We would give you tea, of course, but as for paying visits and playing tennis, it is only idle girls like yourselves who have time for that sort of thing. It will be work and not play, I fear, with us.”

“Oh, Phillis!” exclaimed poor Carrie, with tears in her eyes, and Miss Sartoris looked horrified, for she had West-Indian blood in her veins and was by nature somewhat indolent and pleasure-loving.

“Do you mean you will have to be governesses?” she asked, with a touch of dismay in her voice.

“We shall have to work,” returned Phillis, vaguely. “When we are settled at the Friary we must look round us and do the best we can.” This was felt to be vague by the whole party; but Phillis’s manner was so bold and well assured that no one suspected that anything lay beyond the margin of her speech. They had not made up their minds, perhaps; Sir Francis Challoner would assist them; or there were other sources of help: they must move into the new house first, and then see what was to be done. It was so plausible, so sensible, that every one was deceived.

“Of course you cannot decide in such a hurry: you must have so much to do just now,” observed Carrie. “You must write and tell us all your plans, Phillis, and if there be anything we can do to help you. Mamma, we might have Mrs. Challoner here while the cottage is dismantled. Do spare her to us, Nan, and we will take such care of her!” And they were still discussing this point, and trying to overrule Nan’s objections, who knew nothing would induce her mother to leave them, when other visitors were announced, and in the confusion they were allowed to make their escape.