've
saved enough money to go to school. I can let Upfold Farm for fifteen
pounds a year to Simon Nixey, so I shall soon have money enough. I
promised father I would never sell our farm, that has belonged to
Marlowes ever since it was inclosed from the common. And if I go to
London, I shall be near Madame and the children, and Mrs. Roland
Sefton."

The color had come back to Phebe's face, and her voice was steady and
musical again. There was a clear, frank shining in her blue eyes,
looking so pleasantly into his, that Mr. Clifford sighed regretfully as
he thought of his solitary and friendless life--self-chosen partly, but
growing more dreary as old age, with its infirmities, crept on.

"No, no; you need not go into service," he said; "there is money enough
of your own to do what you wish with. Mrs. Roland refuses to receive
the income from her marriage settlement till every claim against her
husband is paid off. I shall pay your claim off at the rate of one
hundred a year, or more, if you like. You may have a sum sufficient to
keep you at an art school as long as you need be there."

"Why, I shall be very rich!" exclaimed Phebe; "and father dreaded I
should be poor."

"I will run up to London and see what arrangements I can make for you,"
he continued. "Perhaps Mrs. Roland Sefton could find a corner for you in
her own house, small as it is, and Madame would make you as welcome as a
daughter. You are more of a daughter to her than Felicita. Only I must
make a bargain, that you and the children come down often to see me here
in the old house. I should have grown very fond of you, Phebe; and then
you would have married some man whom I detested, and disappointed me
bitterly again. It is best as it is, I suppose. But if you will change
your mind now, and stay with me as my adopted daughter, I'll run the
risk."

"If it was anywhere else!" she answered with a wistful look into his
face, "but not here. If Mrs. Roland Sefton could find room for me I'd
rather live with them than anywhere else in the world. Only don't think
I'm ungrateful because I can't stay here."

"No, no, Phebe," he replied; "it was for my own sake I asked it. As you
grow older, child, you'll find out that the secret root of nine tenths
of the benevolence you see is selfishness."

Six weeks later all the arrangements for Phebe leaving her old home and
entering upon an utterly new life were completed. Simon Nixey, after
vainly urging her to accept hims