what they was up to. Which I wouldn't at once waste the time, and take
the liberty, my dear."

"My father," resumed Phoebe, amending her text, "is always on the bright
side, and the good side. You told me, just now, I had a happy
disposition. How can I help it?"

"Well; but, my dear," returned Lamps argumentatively, "how can I help it?
Put it to yourself sir. Look at her. Always as you see her now. Always
working--and after all, sir, for but a very few shillings a week--always
contented, always lively, always interested in others, of all sorts. I
said, this moment, she was always as you see her now. So she is, with a
difference that comes to much the same. For, when it is my Sunday off
and the morning bells have done ringing, I hear the prayers and thanks
read in the touchingest way, and I have the hymns sung to me--so soft,
sir, that you couldn't hear 'em out of this room--in notes that seem to
me, I am sure, to come from Heaven and go back to it."

It might have been merely through the association of these words with
their sacredly quiet time, or it might have been through the larger
association of the words with the Redeemer's presence beside the
bedridden; but here her dexterous fingers came to a stop on the
lace-pillow, and clasped themselves around his neck as he bent down.
There was great natural sensibility in both father and daughter, the
visitor could easily see; but each made it, for the other's sake,
retiring, not demonstrative; and perfect cheerfulness, intuitive or
acquired, was either the first or second nature of both. In a very few
moments Lamps was taking another rounder with his comical features
beaming, while Phoebe's laughing eyes (just a glistening speck or so upon
their lashes) were again directed by turns to him, and to her work, and