“I can’t help it: Mrs. Dawes told me; and she says it’s all over the town. I told her I did not believe a word of it. And I kept it from you; and I think I should have been really ill, if I’d kept it to myself any longer. Oh, sister! what are you going to do?”

For Miss Browning had risen without speaking a word, and was leaving the room in a stately and determined fashion.

“I’m going to put on my bonnet and things, and then I shall call upon Mrs. Dawes, and confront her with her lies.”

“Oh, don’t call them ‘lies’, sister; it’s such a strong, ugly word. Please call them tarradiddles, for I don’t believe she meant any harm. Besides—besides—if they should turn out to be truth? Really, sister, that’s the weight on my mind; so many things sounded as if they might be true.”

“What things?” said Miss Browning, still standing with judicial erectness of position in the middle of the floor.

“Why—one story was that Molly had given him a letter.”

“Who’s him? How am I to understand a story told in that silly way?” Miss Browning sat down on the nearest chair, and made up her mind to be patient if she could.

“Him is Mr. Preston. And that must be true; because I missed her from my side, when I wanted to ask if she thought blue would look green by candlelight, as the young man said it would; and she had run across the street, and Mrs. Goodenough was just going into the shop, just as she said she was.”

Miss Browning’s distress was overcoming her anger; so she only said, “Phœbe, I think you’ll drive me mad. Do tell me what you heard from Mrs. Dawes, in a sensible and coherent manner, for once in your life.”

“I’m sure I’m trying with all my might to tell you everything just as it happened.”

“What did you hear from Mrs. Dawes?”

“Why, that Molly and Mr. Preston were keeping company just as if she was a maid-servant and he was a gardener: meeting at all sorts of improper times and places, and fainting away in his arms, and out at night together, and writing to each other, and slipping their letters into each other’s hands; and that was what I was talking about, sister, for I next door to saw that done once. I saw her with my own eyes run across the street to Grinstead’s, where he was, for we had just left him there; with a letter in her hand, too, which was not there when she came back, all fluttered and blushing. But I never thought anything of it at the time; but now all the town is talking about it, and crying shame, and saying they ought to be married.” Miss Phœbe sank into sobbing again; but was suddenly roused by a good box on her ear. Miss Browning was standing over her almost trembling with passion.

“Phœbe, if ever I hear you say such things again, I’ll turn you out of the house that minute.”

“I only said what Mrs. Dawes said, and you asked me what it was,” replied Miss Phœbe, humbly and meekly. “Dorothy, you should not have done that.”

“Never mind whether I should or I shouldn’t. That’s not the matter in hand. What I’ve got to decide is, how to put a stop to all these lies.”

“But, Dorothy, they are not all ‘lies’—if you will call them so; I’m afraid some things are true; though I stuck to their being false when Mrs. Dawes told me of them.”

“If I go to Mrs. Dawes, and she repeats them to me, I shall slap her face or box her ears, I’m afraid, for I couldn’t stand tales being told of poor Mary’s daughter, as if they were just a stirring piece of news,