‘It is bad thread, I’m afraid,’ she said, in a gentle sympathetic voice.  But it was too much for Phillis.

‘The thread is bad—­everything is bad—­I am so tired of it all!’ And she put down her work, and hastily left the room.  I do not suppose that in all her life Phillis had ever shown so much temper before.  In many a family the tone, the manner, would not have been noticed; but here it fell with a sharp surprise upon the sweet, calm atmosphere of home.  The minister put down ruler and book, and pushed his spectacles up to his forehead.  The mother looked distressed for a moment, and then smoothed her features and said in an explanatory tone,—­’It’s the weather, I think.  Some people feel it different to others.  It always brings on a headache with me.’  She got up to follow her daughter, but half-way to the door she thought better of it, and came back to her seat.  Good mother! she hoped the better to conceal the unusual spirt of temper, by pretending not to take much notice of it.  ‘Go on, minister,’ she said; ’it is very interesting what you are reading about, and when I don’t quite understand it, I like the sound of your voice.’  So he went on, but languidly and irregularly, and beat no more time with his ruler to any Latin lines.  When the dusk came on, early that July night because of the cloudy sky, Phillis came softly back, making as though nothing had happened.  She took up her work, but it was too dark to do many stitches; and she dropped it soon.  Then I saw how her hand stole into her mother’s, and how this latter fondled it with quiet little caresses, while the minister, as fully aware as I was of this tender pantomime, went on talking in a happier tone of voice about things as uninteresting to him, at the time, I very believe, as they were to me; and that is saying a good deal, and shows how much more real what was passing before him was, even to a farmer, than the agricultural customs of the ancients.

I remember one thing more,—­an attack which Betty the servant made upon me one day as I came in through the kitchen where she was churning, and stopped to ask her for a drink of buttermilk.

‘I say, cousin Paul,’ (she had adopted the family habit of addressing me generally as cousin Paul, and always speaking of me in that form,) ’something’s amiss with our Phillis, and I reckon you’ve a good guess what it is.  She’s not one to take up wi’ such as you,’ (not complimentary, but that Betty never was, even to those for whom she felt the highest respect,) ’but I’d as lief yon Holdsworth had never come near us.  So there you’ve a bit o’ my mind.’  And a very unsatisfactory bit it was.  I did not know what to answer to the glimpse at the real state of the case implied in the shrewd woman’s speech; so I tried to put her off by assuming surprise at her first assertion.

’Amiss with Phillis!  I should like to know why you think anything is wrong with her.  She looks as blooming as any one can do.’