“Oh!” said Mrs. Phillips, “if Stanley was to find you here, he would never forgive me.”

“Is it your fault that I could not rest till I saw you again?  I never thought he’d be so cruel and unreasonable as to blame you for what I’d do.”

“But I heard you was in Adelaide, and Mr. Phillips says that, as long as you stay in Adelaide, he will see that you know no want.  Oh, mother, you had better go back to Adelaide!” said Mrs. Phillips.

“Is that my girl as is talking?” said Mrs. Peck, disdainfully,—­“my girl as I loved so dear, and was so proud of—­that now, when I’ve come all the way from Adelaide, and risked all I’ve got to depend upon, just to please my old eyes with the sight of her handsome face, and my poor old ears with the sound of her voice, would banish me the minute I come!  That’s a pretty husband you’ve got—­that you’re so afeard of him.  You deserve that your children should turn against you when they grow up.  Oh, Betsy, how can you talk so cruel?” and the old woman caught her daughter’s hand, and kissed it with much apparent, and no doubt some real feeling.  “You’re not expecting of him home for a while; let me come and let me go while he is away—­my name is Mrs. Mahoney.  Say as how I am an old servant of your mother’s, or an old servant you had at Wiriwilta, or the mother of some one you know—­call me what you like, but let me just have the liberty to come and see you and the baby, and then I will go back to Adelaide, and Mr. Phillips need never know nothing about it?”

Invention was not one of Mrs. Phillips’s talents, but her mother revelled in it, as I have said before.  She delighted to go amongst people who did not know her, where she could give out an entirely fictitious history of herself quite new.  Even to her intimate acquaintances her narrations were singularly inconsistent.  When her interest demanded that she should speak the truth she did so, but it was with an effort; when the balance lay the other way she had no hesitation and no scruple.

“I ain’t good at these stories, mother,” said Mrs. Phillips, “and I don’t just see what good it will do me to get into trouble with Stanley on your account.  It is just the one thing he is unreasonable about.  When he married me he said he made only one stipulation, and that was, that I should have nothing to do with you or with Peck, and I said I wouldn’t.”

Mrs. Peck here began to sob, and Elsie who was sewing in the next room, hearing a little noise, and afraid that Mrs. Phillips was not well, came in at this moment.  Mrs. Phillips was quite at a loss to account for the emotion of her visitor, but her mother was equal to the emergency.