eeling. Parish work,
at least in a lay family, must depend on the amount of home duty. In the
last years of my dear mother's life I had to let everything go, and I
know it is not easy to resume, still less to begin, but you will be glad
to have done so, and will find it a great comfort.'

'If it be my duty, I must try,' said Phoebe, dejectedly, 'and I suppose
it is. Will you come and show me what to do? I never went into a
cottage in my life.'

I have spoken too soon! thought Honor; yet Robert urged me, and besides
the evil of neglecting the poor, the work will do her good; but it breaks
one's heart to see this meek, mournful obedience.

'While we are alone,' continued Phoebe, 'I can fix times, and do as I
please, but I cannot tell what Mervyn may want me to do when he is at
home.'

'Do you expect that he will wish you to go out with him?' asked Honora.

'Not this autumn,' she answered; 'but he finds it so dull at home, that I
fully expect he will have his friends to stay with him.'

'Phoebe, let me strongly advise you to keep aloof from your brother's
friends. When they are in the house, live entirely in the schoolroom.
If you begin at once as a matter of course, he will see the propriety,
and acquiesce. You are not vexed?'

'Thank you, I believe it is all right. Robert will be the more at ease
about us. I only do not like to act as if I distrusted Mervyn.'

'It would not be discreet for any girl so young as you are to be
entertaining her brother's sporting friends. You could hardly do so
without acquiring the same kind of reputation as my poor Lucy's Rashe,
which he would not wish.'

'Thank you,' said Phoebe more heartily. 'You have shown me the way out
of a difficulty. I need not go into company at all this winter, and
after that, only with our old country neighbours.'

Honora was infinitely relieved at having bestowed this piece of advice,
on which she had agreed with Robert as the only means of insuring
Phoebe's being sheltered from society that Mervyn might not esteem so bad
for his sister as they did.

The quietness of Mervyn's absence did much for the restoration of
Phoebe's spirits. The dame's school was not delightful to her; she had
not begun early enough in life for ease, but she did her tasks there as a
duty, and was amply rewarded by the new enjoyment thus afforded to Maria.
The importance of being surrounded by a ring of infants, teaching the
alphabet, guiding them round the goose