will be time
enough for sleep when duty is done,--the duty for which I have longed
ever since I knew what duty was." And her eyes swam in tears.

Phoebe's face was a dismal sight,--too dismal for the sickroom, for so
many hours had she been in tears. She was dismissed to refresh herself
with a turn in the garden. It was Philip's doing that she was at hand
at all. Mrs Rowland had ordained that she should go; but Philip had
supported the girl in her resolution to bear anything, rather than leave
her mistress while it was essential to her mistress's comfort that she
should stay.

Mrs Enderby was in great pain; but yet not suffering too much to be
comforted by finding that all were safe and well in the corner-house.
She even smiled when the others laughed at the ridiculous stories with
which the children had assaulted her imagination. She thought it was
very wrong for people to fabricate such things, and tell them to
children:--they might chance to put some extremely old ladies into a
terrible fright.--She was soothed in the very midst of a spasm, by
hearing that Margaret would stay with her as long as she liked, if it
would be of any comfort to her. In answer to her surprise and almost
alarm at such a blessing, Philip said that Margaret wished it as a
pleasure, and asked it as a sort of right. Now, could she not guess any
reason why it was a sort of right of Margaret's to attend upon her like
a daughter? Yes,--it was so indeed! Margaret was to be her daughter--
some time or other,--when her big boy should have learned all his
lessons, as little George would say.

"I am thankful! Indeed I _am_ thankful, my dears, to hear this. But,
my loves, that will be too late for me. I rejoice indeed; but it will
be too late for me."

"Well, then, let me be your daughter now."

The old lady clasped her arms about Margaret, and endured her next
paroxysm with her head upon her young friend's shoulder.

"I have a daughter already," said she, when she revived a little: "but I
have room in my heart for another: and I always had you in my heart, my
love, from the first moment I saw you."

"You hold all the world in your heart, I think."

"Ah! my love, you flatter me. I mean I took to you particularly from
the very hour I saw you. You have always been so kind and gentle with
me!"

Margaret's heart swelled at the thought that any one could ever have
been otherwise than kind and gentle to one so lowly and so loving.