"What plan? What are you talking about, Dulce? and why do you keep your sisters standing in the hall?" asked Mrs. Challoner, a little irritably. But her brief nervousness vanished at the sight of their faces: she wanted nothing more, she told herself, but to see them round her, and hear their voices. She grew quite cheerful when Phillis told her about the new papers, and how Mrs. Crump was to clean down the cottage, and how Crump had promised to mow the grass and paint the greenhouse, and Jack and Bobbie were to weed the garden-paths. "It is a perfect wilderness now, mother: you never saw such a place." "Never mind, so that it will hold us, and that we shall all be together," she returned, with a smile. "But Dulce talked of some plan: you must let me hear it, my dears; you must not keep me in the dark about anything. I know we shall all have to work," continued the poor lady; "but if we be all together, if you will promise not to leave me, I think I could bear anything." "Are we to tell her!" motioned Nan with her lips to Phillis; and as Phillis nodded, "Yes," Nan gently and quietly began unfolding their plan. But, with all her care and all Phillis's promptings, the revelation was a great shock to Mrs. Challoner; in her weakened state she seemed hardly able to bear it. Dulce repented bitterly her incautious whisper when she saw her sisters' tired faces, and their fruitless attempts to soften the effects of such a blow. For a little while, Mrs. Challoner seemed on the brink of despair; she would not listen; she abandoned herself to lamentations; she became so hysterical at last that Dorothy was summoned from the kitchen and taken into confidence. "Mother, you are breaking our hearts," Nan said, at last. She was kneeling at her feet, chafing her hands, and Phillis was fanning her; but she pushed them both away from her with weak violence. "It is I whose heart is breaking! Why must I live to see such things? Dorothy, do you know my daughters are going to be dressmakers?--my daughters, who are Challoners,--who have been delicately nurtured,--who might hold up their heads with any one?" "Dorothy, hold your tongue!" exclaimed Phillis, peremptorily. "You are not to speak; this is for us to decide, and no one else. Mammy, you are making Nan look quite pale: she is dreadfully tired, and so am I. Why need we decide anything to-night? Every one is upset and excited, and when that is the case one can never arrive at any proper conclusion. Let us talk about it to-morrow, when we are rested." And, though Mrs. Challoner would not allow herself to be comforted, Nan's fatigue and paleness were so visible to her maternal eyes that they were more eloquent than Phillis's words.