Mrs. Challoner passed a sleepless night, and her pillow was sown with thorns. To think of the Challoners falling so low as this! To think of her pretty Nan, her clever, bright Phillis, her pet Dulce coming to this; "oh, the pity of it!" she cried in the dark hours, when vitality runs lowest, and thoughts seem to flow involuntarily towards a dark centre.
But with the morning came sunshine, and her girl's faces,--a little graver than usual, perhaps, but still full of youth and the brightness of energy; and the sluggish nightmare of yesterday's grief began to fade a little.
"Now, mammy, you are not going to be naughty to-day!" was Dulce's morning salutation as she seated herself on the bed.
"Oh, as bad as possible. You pushed poor Nan and Phillis away, and would not let any one come near you but that cross old Dorothy, and you never bade us good-night; but if you promise to be good, I will forgive you and make it up," finished Dulce, with those light butterfly kisses to which she was addicted.
"Now, Chatterbox, it is my turn," interrupted Phillis; and then she began a carefully concocted little speech, very carefully drawn out to suit her mother's sensitive peculiarities.
She went over the old ground patiently point by point. Mrs. Challoner shuddered at the idea of letting lodgings.
"I knew you would agree with us," returned Phillis, with a convincing nod; and then she went on to the next clause.
Mrs. Challoner argued a great deal about the governess scheme. She was quite angry with Phillis, and seemed to suffer a great deal of self-reproach, when the girl spoke of their defective education and lack of accomplishments. Nan had to come to her sister's rescue; but the mother was slow to yield the point:
"I don't know what you mean. My girls are not different from other girls. What would your poor father say if he were alive? It is cruel to say this to me, when I stinted myself to give you every possible advantage, and I paid Miss Martin eighty pounds a year," she concluded, tearfully, feeling as though she were the victim of a fraud.
She was far more easily convinced that going out as companions would be impracticable under the circumstances. "Oh, no, that will never do!" she cried, when the two little rooms with Dulce were proposed; and after this Phillis found her task less difficult. She talked her mother over at last to reluctant acquiescence. "I never knew how I came to consent," she said, afterwards, "but they were too much for me."