CHAPTER XXVI
“May I go right in?—Phœbe! Oh, Phœbe, I’m so frightened! Darling,—why—why, you’re much better!”
Miss Ruth had entered with a rush, to find Phœbe just emerging from the clothes-closet. Miss Ruth was breathless, and a little pale. Now she dropped the hat she was carrying, and knelt on the carpet, and caught Phœbe to her.
“Yes, I’m—I’m much better,” declared Phœbe. She bent to kiss Miss Ruth’s hair.
Miss Ruth hid her face against Phœbe’s breast. “I’m so glad! So glad!” she said tenderly.
“You see,” admitted Phœbe, “I wasn’t truly sick.”
Miss Ruth looked up. “But the Judge said——”
Phœbe nodded. “I know. Only I—I’ve just been pretending.”
“Phœbe!” laughed Miss Ruth. Then, suddenly grave, “Oh, you don’t know how it hurt to have you missing that day! Oh, Phœbe, I’m so happy that you’re just pretending!” Then, catching sight of the pumps, and, next, of the blue smock, “Why, Phœbe, this dress! Something’s happened!”
“No,” declared Phœbe, “not yet. But, Miss Ruth, get ready! Something’s going to happen!”
“To me?” Miss Ruth sat back. Her hair was rumpled. She looked very young and girlish.
“To both of us,” promised Phœbe, solemnly.
“Ho—ho!”
“It’s something awfully important,” cautioned Phœbe.
“Dear me! Well, I think I’d better get up, then, and be prepared.” Miss Ruth seated herself on the sofa. “Now! I’m all curiosity. Is there anything I’m supposed to do?”
Phœbe thought a moment. “Ye-e-es. Let me see.—I think you can lean back.”
“Ah!” Miss Ruth made herself comfortable against a cushion. “I like this, because I ran all the way over.” She smiled at Phœbe provokingly. “And now what?”
“Now try to look just as pretty as you can.”
Miss Ruth laughed. “Oh, I’ll do my best,” she declared.
Phœbe shook her head at her. “I’m not joking,” she said earnestly. “You know you are pretty.”
“Oh, give me a kiss!” cried Miss Ruth, laughing again, and leaning to catch at the blue smock.
But Phœbe backed away. “No,” she said firmly, “it’s too soon——”
“Too soon?” Miss Ruth was puzzled.
“Yes. You see this has to be done in a certain way.”
“Oh.”
“Right now, a kiss would be turning everything upside down.” Phœbe was very much in earnest.
“Well! Well!” Miss Ruth tried to look properly impressed.
“Next,” continued Phœbe, “I come close to you, and I look at you, showing that I love you.”
“Phœbe!” Now Miss Ruth caught at Phœbe’s hand.
“No! Holding hands also comes later.”
“I see.” Miss Ruth leaned back once more.
“Of course, you’re surprised that I love you——”
“But I’m not!”
“You will be when you hear it all,” threatened Phœbe. “And right now you ought to drop your eyes.”
Miss Ruth looked down. It was as if she understood, suddenly, what it all meant. Her face grew grave, and softly pink.
“That’s better,” said Phœbe, admiringly. “So this is when I reach and take your hand.” She took Miss Ruth’s hand gently, and held it between both her own. Once, in a charming picture, she had seen Mr. Henry Walthall do precisely that. “Miss Shepard,” she went on, “the first day I met you, I liked you very much. That was before—Mother—went away. I was unhappy, and you were so good to me. You knew how I felt.”
“Ah, my dear,” breathed Miss Ruth. She leaned forward, holding out the other hand.
“Wait!” pleaded Phœbe. “Because I’m not done. Miss Ruth, day after day, for all these months, I’ve liked you more and more. Now I know that I love you better than I do my relations.”
“Phœbe, no!” Miss Ruth stared in amazement.
“Yes! Oh, not more than Daddy, because he’s not a relation. But, Miss Ruth, I love you as much as I do Daddy.”
“And I love you,” said Miss Ruth.
Phœbe dropped to the carpet at Miss Ruth’s knee. “How much?” she asked. “Oh, think hard before you say!”
“I hardly know how much.” She took Phœbe’s face between her hands. “But very, very much.”
“Do you love me so much that you’d do something wonderful for me?—something that would make me the happiest girl in the whole world?”
“What, darling?” Miss Ruth bent close. Her look searched Phœbe’s face.
Phœbe had meant to go on just as Mr. Henry Walthall would have gone on—“Miss Shepard, dear little woman, say Yes to me,” and then add, “Be my mother, and Daddy’s loving wife!” But she forgot how Mr. Walthall had knelt and looked, forgot to be solemn and poised; and completely out of her thoughts went all that she had planned to say. Instead she threw her arms about Miss Ruth, and clung to her wildly. “Oh, you must come with us!” she cried. “We can’t live without you. Daddy adores you! And I do! Oh, Miss Ruth, I think I’ve inherited it!”
Miss Ruth gently freed herself from the hold of the young arms. Then without speaking, she drew back from Phœbe. “My dear,” she said quietly, “who told you to say that?”
Phœbe hesitated. The truth was that Sophie had put the idea of inheritance into Phœbe’s head. Once Phœbe had protested to Sophie her great affection for Miss Ruth. Whereupon Sophie, with a wise nod, had said, “Sure y’ do. You inherited it.”
But the truth would not do! Uncle Bob had told Phœbe what to say, and she must obey him. It was a fib, and it was not a little one. But it would do much—for herself; for Miss Ruth; last, and most important, for the dear father, who, long ago, had put aside his own dreams for the sake of the elder brother he loved.
Phœbe looked straight into Miss Ruth’s eyes. “Who?” she repeated. “Why, it was Daddy.”
Miss Ruth caught her close, held her for a long moment during which neither moved nor spoke, then pushed back her hair and kissed her. “Phœbe, dear,” she said, “I want to tell you something. From the moment I first saw you I loved you, just as you loved me,—oh, so tenderly! I loved you because you were you; and then, I loved you for another reason——”
“What?” whispered Phœbe.
“Can you keep a secret?”
Phœbe remembered Uncle Bob. She nodded. “I’m keeping several,” she declared.
“Phœbe,” said Miss Ruth, speaking very low, “I loved you because you were his little daughter.”
“Daddy’s?”
“Your dear, fine Daddy’s!”
“Then you’ll be my mother! Oh, Miss Ruth, say that you will! Say you’ll come! Say Yes! Say Yes!”
“My little daughter!” faltered Miss Ruth. She laid her cheek against Phœbe’s hair.
It was then that Phœbe heard a heavy step—heard the door close, and the step come toward them. “Ruth!” said a voice. (Uncle Bob had sent some one else!)
Miss Ruth rose, lifting Phœbe with her. The two stood, arms about each other, waiting. But Miss Ruth’s look was lowered. Only Phœbe silently beseeched her father.
“Dearest,” he said presently,—and he was not speaking to Phœbe; “I suppose there’s no use fighting against it.”
“No,” she answered. “No use.”
“Because he wants it,” went on Phœbe’s father; “dear old Bob. He’s the one that’s fixed this up?” He came a step nearer.
Miss Ruth looked up then. “My heart was breaking,” she whispered, “at the thought of having you go.”
“Ruth!” He held out his arms to her, and she went to him.
Phœbe scarcely knew what to do. She had never seen just this situation on the screen. But instinct told her that it would be best, perhaps, to let Daddy and Miss Ruth have this moment to themselves. So Phœbe turned aside, and looked out of a window at the branches that were close and the clouds that were far. And valiantly she tried to forget the two behind her, and hear only the birds.
“I want you, Ruth,” her father was saying. “Oh, I’ve always wanted you!”
“You do love me!” answered Miss Ruth. “Dear Jim!”
“Tweet-tweet!” added a sparrow outside. He had his head on one side, precisely, Phœbe thought, as if he were trying to look in. Oh, the prying little thing! Phœbe swung one hand at him.
“And Phœbe?” It was Miss Ruth, turning to speak, so softly.
“Yes, Mother?” said Phœbe.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
- Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
- Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.