"Stop a minute, Phoebe," interrupted her father. "'Think of the years!'--yes, yes--you are getting"--and now he regarded her more attentively than he had done for a long time past, and seemed to be surprised at a discovery which forced itself upon him--"You are getting quite a woman--quite a woman!" "Yes, father," said Phoebe, quietly and modestly; "I shall be eighteen next Saturday. Aunt Leth was saying only last week how like I was to my dear mamma." Miser Farebrother rose and hobbled across the room and back. It was with difficulty he did this, his bones were so stiff; but when Phoebe stepped forward to assist him, he motioned her angrily away. He accepted, however, the crutch stick which she handed to him; he could not get along without it, but he snatched it from her pettishly. Her mention of her mother disturbed and irritated him. He recalled the few days of her unhappy life at Parksides, and the picture of her death-bed recurred to his mind with vivid force. There was a reproach in it which he could not banish or avoid. At length he sank into his arm-chair, coughing and groaning, and averting his eyes from Phoebe. She was accustomed to his humours, and she stood at the table patiently, biding his time. "You have made me forget what I was about to say," he began. "I am sorry, father." "You are not sorry; you are glad. You are always thwarting and going against me. What makes you speak to me of your mother in a voice of reproach? Tell me that. You have been egged on to it!" And he thumped his crutch stick viciously on the floor. "I have not been egged on to it," said Phoebe, with spirit; "and it is entirely a fancy of yours that I spoke in a tone of reproach." "It is no fancy I am never wrong--never. Your mother died when you were almost a baby in arms. You have no remembrance of her; it isn't possible that you can remember her." "I do not remember her, father," said Phoebe, with a touch of sadness in her tone; "but Aunt Leth has a portrait of her, which I often and often look at, and I am glad to know that I am like her. You surely can't be displeased at that?" "Aunt Leth! Aunt Leth! Aunt Leth!" he exclaimed, fretfully; and then, with unreasonable vehemence, "Why do you try to irritate me?" "I do not try," said Phoebe, "and I do not thwart and go against you."