“But this ain’t exactly her sphere.  She was a telling me as she was brought up with great expectations,” said Mrs. Peck.

“She has got over her disappointment about that, I think,” said Mrs. Phillips.

“I dare say you think it shabby in me to try to entice your maid from you; and really, after all, a comfortable home with a lady, as it must be a pleasure to serve and to wait upon, is perhaps the best thing after all.  But as I was saying, Mrs. Phillips, I would be glad to get out for an hour or two with Alice.  I’ll not do much work without her, for I’m sure to go wrong if she is not at my elbow.  There’s not many ladies so generous as you, to pay me for my blundering work; and Alice is wonderful patient too.  I don’t know how to thank her for the pains she takes with me, and I can’t help being very stupid.  After being used to active life, one don’t take well to this sitting still.  So I’ll just put on my bonnet and shawl and go out a bit with Alice.”

Mrs. Phillips did not at all like this proposal, for she had an idea that her husband would very much disapprove of it, and would be still more angry at that than at her having her mother in her house; but then Mr. Phillips was away, and her mother was there, and the present terror conquered the distant one.  She never knew what her mother might or might not say, if she thwarted her in anything:  she had distant recollections of terrible punishments that always followed the slightest act of disobedience, or even carelessness, in her childish days; and though now she knew her mother would not strike her with her hands, she was in constant dread of her tongue.  So that now Mrs. Peck took it for granted that she would be allowed to accompany her daughter’s maid—­she dared not refuse it.  Alice scarcely liked the idea of going to walk to town with this strange woman; but at the same time her curiosity as to what she might have to say was very great.  She felt that this Mrs. Mahoney had intelligence to give that was of great importance, and that she wished to be secure from interruption.  Mrs. Phillips was constantly going in and out, for she was afraid to leave her mother long with any one, and always looked suspicious of what they might be talking about.  Mary, the housemaid, and the nurse, too, seemed to be curious about this old needlewoman, and were often coming in unexpectedly.

When Mrs. Peck had put on her bonnet and shawl, and dropped her veil over her face, she looked sufficiently respectable for a companion to one so little known in Melbourne as Alice Melville, so she thought there could be no harm in going out for an hour or two with her for the sake of ascertaining if she had any light to throw on the dark subject of Francis’s birth.

When they got out of doors, Mrs. Peck appeared at first to be rather anxious to resume the conversation which her daughter had interrupted; but as they were pretty closely followed by two other pedestrians all the way into town, she made up her mind to attend to Mrs. Phillips’s business first, so they went to Collins Street and bought the trimmings.  Then Mrs. Peck went to a bookseller’s shop and purchased a shilling novel that she said she had been told was very interesting, but she appeared scarcely to know the name of it, and took the first one the shopman gave to her.