comprehend or compassionate. She hied her back to Phoebe, to whom she
announced her father's answer; and then went gossipping to all her
female acquaintance in Hereford, to tell them all that she knew, and all
that she did not know; and to endeavour to find out a secret where there
was none to be found.

There are trials of temper in all conditions: and no lady, in high or
low life, could endure them with a better grace than Phoebe. Whilst Mr.
and Mrs. Hill were busied abroad, there came to see Phoebe one of the
widow Smith's children. With artless expressions of gratitude to Phoebe,
this little girl mixed the praises of O'Neill, who, she said, had been
the constant friend of her mother, and had given her money every
week since the fire happened. "Mammy loves him dearly, for being so
good-natured," continued the child: "and he has been good to other
people as well as to us."

"To whom?" said Phoebe.

"To a poor man who has lodged for these few days past next door to
us," replied the child; "I don't know his name rightly, but he is an
Irishman; and he goes out a-haymaking in the day-time, along with a
number of others. He knew Mr. O'Neill in his own country, and he told
mammy a great deal about his goodness."

As the child finished these words, Phoebe took out of a drawer some
clothes, which she had made for the poor woman's children, and gave them
to the little girl. It happened that the Limerick gloves had been thrown
into this drawer; and Phoebe's favourable sentiments of the giver
of those gloves were revived by what she had just heard, and by the
confession Mrs. Hill had made, that she had no reasons, and but vague