s homeliest details. Pardon, Miss Beecham, but Mrs.
Tozer is right, and you are wrong. The idea of carrying off a few lines
of a poem in one's pocket for one's collection--"

"Now that's what I call speaking up," said Mrs. Tozer, the first time
she had opened her lips, "that's just what I like. Mr. Northcote has a
deal more sense than the like of you. He knows what's what. Old things
like this as might have been my granny's, they're good enough for every
day, they're very nice for common use; but they ain't no more fit to be
put away in cupboards and hoarded up like fine china, no more than I am.
Mr. Northcote should see our best--that's worth the looking at; and if
I'd known as the gentleman was coming--but you can't put an old head on
young shoulders. Phoebe's as good as gold, and the trouble she takes with
an old woman like me is wonderful; but she can't be expected to think of
everything, can she now, at her age?"

The two young men laughed--it was the first point of approach between
them, and Phoebe restrained a smile, giving them a look from one to
another. She gave Reginald his cup of tea very graciously.

"Mr. Northcote prefers the Wedgwood, and Mr. May doesn't mind,
grandmamma," she said sweetly. "So it is as well to have the best china
in the cupboard. Grandpapa, another muffin--it is quite hot; and I know
that is what you like best."

"Well, I'll say that for Phoebe," said Tozer, with his mouth full, "that
whether she understands china or not I can't tell, but she knows what a
man likes, which is more to the purpose for a young woman. That's what
she does; and looks after folk's comforts as I never yet saw her match.
She's a girl in a thousand, is Phoebe, junior. There be them as is more
for dress," he added, fond and greasy, looking at her seated modestly in
that gown, which had filled with awe and admiration the experienced mind
of Mrs. Sam Hurst; "and plays the pianny, and that sort of style of
girl; but for one as minds the comforts of them about her----" Tozer
turned back to the table, and made a gulp of his last piece of muffin.
Eloquence could have no more striking climax; the proof of all his
enthusiasm, was it not there?

"Don't you play, Miss Beecham?" said Reginald, half-amused, half-angry.

"A little," said Phoebe, with a laugh. She had brought down a small
cottage piano out of the drawing-room, where nobody ever touched it,
into a dark corner out of reach of the lamp. It was the only
accomp