“With all my heart, wench,” said he; “but it must not be thou.  I can’t spare thee.”

“May I have Dick, father?”

“Dick! he is rather young.”

“But he is very quick, father, and minds every word I tell him.”

“Ay, he is as fond of thee as ever a cow was of a calf.  Well, you can try him.”

So the love-sick woman of business set up a little shop, and put her brother Dick in it, and all to see more of her struggling artist.  She stayed several days, to open the little shop, and start the business.  She advertised pure milk, and challenged scientific analysis of everything she sold.  This came of her being a reader; she knew, by the journals, that we live in a sinful and adulterating generation, and anything pure must be a godsend to the poor poisoned public.

Now, Dr. Staines, though known to the profession as a diagnost, was also an analyst, and this challenge brought him down on Phoebe Dale.  He told her he was a physician, and in search of pure food for his own family—­would she really submit the milk to analysis?

Phoebe smiled an honest country smile, and said, “Surely, sir.”  She gave him every facility, and he applied those simple tests which are commonly used in France, though hardly known in England.

He found it perfectly pure, and told her so; and gazed at Phoebe for a moment, as a phenomenon.

She smiled again at that, her broad country smile.  “That is a wonder in London, I dare say.  It’s my belief half the children that die here are perished with watered milk.  Well, sir, we shan’t have that on our souls, father and I; he is a farmer in Essex.  This comes a many miles, this milk.”

Staines looked in her face, with kindly approval marked on his own eloquent features.  She blushed a little at so fixed a regard.  Then he asked her if she would supply him with milk, butter, and eggs.

“Why, if you mean sell you them, yes, sir, with pleasure.  But for sending them home to you in this big town, as some do, I can’t; for there’s only brother Dick and me:  it is an experiment like.”

“Very well,” said Staines:  “I will send for them.”

“Thank you kindly, sir.  I hope you won’t be offended, sir; but we only sell for ready money.”

“All the better:  my order at home is, no bills.”

When he was gone, Phoebe, assuming vast experience, though this was only her third day, told Dick that was one of the right sort:  “and oh, Dick,” said she, “did you notice his eye?”

“Not particklar, sister.”

“There now; the boy is blind.  Why, ’twas like a jewel.  Such an eye I never saw in a man’s head, nor a woman’s neither.”

Staines told his wife about Phoebe and her brother, and spoke of her with a certain admiration that raised Rosa’s curiosity, and even that sort of vague jealousy that fires at bare praise.  “I should like to see this phenomenon,” said she.  “You shall,” said he.  “I have to call on Mrs. Manly.  She lives near.  I will drop you at the little shop, and come back for you.”