hey grow
up. Oh, Betsy, how can you talk so cruel?" and the old woman caught her
daughter's hand, and kissed it with much apparent, and no doubt some
real feeling. "You're not expecting of him home for a while; let me
come and let me go while he is away--my name is Mrs. Mahoney. Say as
how I am an old servant of your mother's, or an old servant you had at
Wiriwilta, or the mother of some one you know--call me what you like,
but let me just have the liberty to come and see you and the baby, and
then I will go back to Adelaide, and Mr. Phillips need never know
nothing about it?"

Invention was not one of Mrs. Phillips's talents, but her mother
revelled in it, as I have said before. She delighted to go amongst
people who did not know her, where she could give out an entirely
fictitious history of herself quite new. Even to her intimate
acquaintances her narrations were singularly inconsistent. When her
interest demanded that she should speak the truth she did so, but it
was with an effort; when the balance lay the other way she had no
hesitation and no scruple.

"I ain't good at these stories, mother," said Mrs. Phillips, "and I
don't just see what good it will do me to get into trouble with Stanley
on your account. It is just the one thing he is unreasonable about.
When he married me he said he made only one stipulation, and that was,
that I should have nothing to do with you or with Peck, and I said I
wouldn't."

Mrs. Peck here began to sob, and Elsie who was sewing in the next room,
hearing a little noise, and afraid that Mrs. Phillips was not well,
came in at this moment. Mrs. Phillips was quite at a loss to account
for the emotion of her visitor, but her mother was equal to the
emergency.

"I am sure, Mrs. Phillips, I cannot say what I feel," said she, "but
your goodness really overpowers me. To think as the little girl as I
knowed when she played with my poor Susan as is now no more should
recollect me now she's growed up so beautiful, and had such a fine
house of her own, and should help me in my troubles! It is quite too
much for me. But all I want is just a little to start me in a way of
business, and I'll be sure to pay it back again if I get on--and I have
got a good connection, a capital connection--your liberality I can
never forget;" and Mrs. Peck fumbled with her purse, and looked very
hard at Elsie. This was the person whom she wished to see, even more
than her ungrateful daughter, from whom she had e