“Mamma,” said Phoebe, tranquilly, “I think you forget that it is me you are talking of. I hope I know what a pastor’s daughter owes to herself. I have had my training. I don’t think you need be frightened for me.”
“No; I think Phoebe could manage them if anyone could,” said her father, complacently.
She smiled with a gracious response to this approval. She had a book in her hand, which of itself was a proof of Phoebe’s pretensions. It was, I think, one of the volumes of Mr. Stuart Mill’s Dissertations. Phoebe was not above reading novels or other light literature, but this only in the moments dedicated to amusement, and the present hour was morning, a time not for amusement, but for work.
“Phoebe don’t know Carlingford, nor the folks there,” said Mrs. Beecham, flushed by the thought, and too much excited to think of the elegancies of diction. She had suffered more than her husband had, and retained a more forcible idea of the perils; and in the pause which ensued, all these perils crowded into her mind. As her own ambition rose, she had felt how dreadful it was to be shut in to one small circle of very small folks. She had felt the injurious line of separation between the shopkeepers and the rest of the world; at least she thought she had felt it. As a matter of fact, I think it very doubtful whether Phoebe Tozer had felt anything of the kind; but she thought so now; and then it was a fact that she was born Phoebe Tozer, and was used to that life, whereas Phoebe Beecham had no such knowledge. She had never been aware of the limitations of a small Dissenting community in a small town, and though she knew how much the Crescent congregation thought of a stray millionaire like Mr. Copperhead (a thing which seemed too natural to Miss Beecham to leave any room for remark), her mother thought that it might have a bad effect upon Phoebe’s principles in every way, should she find out the lowly place held by the connection in such an old-fashioned, self-conceited, Tory town as Carlingford. What would Phoebe think? how would she manage to associate with the Browns and the Pigeons? Fortunately, Mr. and Mrs. Tozer had retired from the shop; but the shop was still there, greasy and buttery as ever, and Mrs. Beecham’s own respected papa was still “the butterman.” How would Phoebe bear it? This was the uppermost thought in her mind.
“You know, my darling,” she said afterwards, when they had left the study, and were seated, talking it over, in the drawing-room, “there will be a great deal to put up with. I am silly; I don’t like even to hear your papa say anything about dear old grandpapa. He is my own, and I ought to stand up for him; but even with grandpapa, you will have a great deal to put up with. They don’t understand our ways. They are used to have things so different. They think differently, and they talk differently. Even with your sense, Phoebe, you will find it hard to get on.”
“I am not at all afraid, I assure you, mamma.”
“You are not afraid, because you don’t know. I know, and I am afraid. You know, we are not great people, Phoebe. I have always let you know that—and that it is far finer to elevate yourself than to be born to a good position. But when you see really the place which poor dear grandpapa and grandmamma think so much of, I am sure I don’t know what you will say.”
“I shall not say much. I shall not say anything, mamma. I am not prejudiced,” said Phoebe. “So long as an occupation is honest and honourable, and you can do your duty in it, what does it matter? One kind of work is just as good as another. It is the spirit in which it is done.”
“Oh, honest!” said Mrs. Beecham, half relieved, half affronted. “Of course, it was all that. Nothing else would have answered papa. Your uncle Tom has the—business now. You need not go there, my dear, unless you like. I am not fond of Mrs. Tom. We were always, so to speak, above our station; but she is not at all above it. She is just adapted for it; and I don’t think she would suit you in the least. So except just for a formal call, I don’t think you need go there, and even that only if grandmamma can spare you. You must be civil to everybody, I suppose; but you need not go further; they are not society for you. You will hear people talk of me by my Christian name, as if we were most intimate; but don’t believe it, Phoebe. I always felt aspirations towards a very different kind of life.”
“Oh, don’t be afraid, mamma,” said Phoebe, calmly; “I shall be able to keep them at a distance. You need not fear.”
“Yes, my dear,” said the anxious mother; “but not too much at a distance either. That is just what is so difficult. If they can find an excuse for saying that my child is stuck up! Oh! nothing would please them more than to be able to find out something against my child. When you have apparently belonged to that low level, and then have risen,” said Mrs. Beecham, with a hot colour on her cheek, “there is nothing these kind of people will not say.”
These conversations raised a great deal of thought in Phoebe’s mind; but they did not change her resolution. If it was necessary that someone should go to look after her grandmamma, and keep all those vulgar people at bay, and show to the admiring world what a Dissenting minister’s daughter could
