Molly got a book, and read her stepmother to sleep, preferring that to the harder task of keeping up a continual murmur of speech.

Then she stole down and went into the dining-room, where the fire was gone out; purposely neglected by the servants, to mark their displeasure at their new mistress’s having had her tea in her own room.  Molly managed to light it, however, before her father came home, and collected and rearranged some comfortable food for him.  Then she knelt down again on the hearth-rug, gazing into the fire in a dreamy reverie, which had enough of sadness about it to cause the tears to drop unnoticed from her eyes.  But she jumped up, and shook herself into brightness at the sound of her father’s step.

‘How is Mr. Craven Smith?’ said she.

’Dead.  He just recognized me.  He was one of my first patients on coming to Hollingford.’

Mr. Gibson sate down in the arm-chair made ready for him, and warmed his hands at the fire, seeming neither to need food nor talk, as he went over a train of recollections.  Then he roused himself from his sadness, and looking round the room, he said briskly enough,—­

‘And where’s the new mamma?’

’She was tired, and went to bed early.  Oh, papa! must I call her “mamma"?’

‘I should like it,’ replied he, with a slight contraction of the brows.

Molly was silent.  She put a cup or tea near him; he stirred it, and sipped it, and then he recurred to the subject.

’Why shouldn’t you call her “mamma”?  I’m sure she means to do the duty of a mother to you.  We all may make mistakes, and her ways may not be quite all at once our ways; but at any rate let us start with a family bond between us.’

What would Roger say was right?—­that was the question that rose to Molly’s mind.  She had always spoken of her father’s new wife as Mrs Gibson, and had once burst out at Miss Brownings’ with a protestation that she never would call her ‘mamma.’  She did not feel drawn to her new relation by their intercourse that evening.  She kept silence, though she knew her father was expecting an answer.  At last he gave up his expectation, and turned to another subject; told about their journey, questioned her as to the Hamleys, the Brownings, Lady Harriet, and the afternoon they had passed together at the Manor House.  But there was a certain hardness and constraint in his manner, and in hers a heaviness and absence of mind.  All at once she said,—­

‘Papa, I will call her “mamma"!’

He took her hand, and grasped it tight; but for an instant or two he did not speak.  Then he said,—­

’You won’t be sorry for it, Molly, when you come to lie as poor Craven Smith did to-night.’

For some time the murmurs and grumblings of the two elder servants were confined to Molly’s ears, then they spread to her father’s, who, to Molly’s dismay, made summary work with them.

’You don’t like Mrs. Gibson’s ringing her bell so often, don’t you?  You’ve been spoilt, I’m afraid; but if you don’t conform to my wife’s desires, you have the remedy in your own hands, you know.’