"You see by the heading I'm safe over here. I can't tell you much about the trip—no use wearing out the censor's pencils. The sea's wonderful, but I like dry land better. I'm on dry land now, in a quaint French village where the streets run up hill and the people wear strange costumes. The women wash their clothes by beating them on stones in the brook—how would the Lancaster County women like that?"
It was a long, chatty letter and it warmed the heart of the mother and interested Phœbe and the others who heard it.
"He's a great David," the preacher said as he handed the letter to Phœbe. "I suppose you'll have to read it over and over to Aunt Barbara."
He looked at the girl as he spoke. Her high color and shining eyes spoke eloquently of her interest in the letter. "Ah," he thought, "I believe she still likes Davie best. I'm sure she does."
The preacher had been greatly changed by the events of the past year. He would always be a bit too strict in his views of life, a bit narrow in many things. Nevertheless, he was changed. He was less harsh in his opinions of others since he had seen and heard how thousands who were not of his religious faith had gone forth to lay down their lives that the world might be made a decent place in which to live. He, Phares Eby, preacher, had formerly denounced all that pertained to actors and the theatre, yet tears had coursed down his cheeks as he had read the account of a famous comedian who had given his only son for the cause of freedom and who was going about in the camps and in the trenches bringing cheer to the men. As the preacher read that he confessed to himself that the comedian, familiar as he was with footlights, was doing more good in the world than a dozen Phares Ebys. That one incident swept away some of the prejudice of the preacher. He knew he could never sanction the doings so many people indulge in but he felt at the same time that those same pleasures need not have a damning influence upon all people.
Phœbe noted the change in him. She felt like a discoverer of hidden treasure when she heard of the influence he was exerting in behalf of the Red Cross and Liberty Loans. But she was finding hidden treasures in many places those days. Strenuous, busy days they were but they held many revelations of soul beauty.
Every link with Phœbe's former life in Philadelphia was broken save the one binding her to Virginia. That friendship was too precious to be shattered. The country girl had written a long letter to the city girl, telling of the decision to give up the music lessons. "My dear, dear friend," she wrote frankly, "you tried to keep me from being hurt, but I wouldn't see. How I must have worried you and how foolish I was! I know better now. I do not regret my winter in the city and I do appreciate all you did for me, but I am happy to be back on the farm again. I'm afraid I tried to be an American Beauty rose when I was meant to be just some ordinary wild flower like the daisy or even the common yarrow. I owe so much to you. We must always be friends."
One day in late summer Phœbe fairly radiated joy as she hurried up the hill and ran down the road to the garden where Mother Bab was gathering larkspur seeds.
"Oh, Mother Bab, I've such good news about Granny Hogendobler and Old Aaron!"
"Come in, tell me!"