"I am glad we understand each other, Phœbe."
Miss Lee was genuinely interested in the child, attracted by the charming personality of the country girl. Of the thirty children of that school she felt that Phœbe Metz, in spite of her old-fashioned dress and older-fashioned ways, was the preëminent figure. It would be a delight to teach a child whose face could light with so much animation.
"Now, Phœbe," she said, "since we understand each other and have become friends, gather your books and hurry home. Your mother may be anxious about you."
"Not my mother," Phœbe replied soberly. "I ain't got no mom. It's my Aunt Maria and my pop takes care of me. My mom's dead long a'ready. But I'm goin' now," she ended brightly before Miss Lee could answer. "And the road's all down-hill so it won't take me long."
So she gathered her books and kettle, said good-bye to Miss Lee and hurried from the schoolhouse. When she was fairly on the road she broke into her habit of soliloquy: "Ach, if she ain't the nicest lady! So pretty she is and so kind! She was vonderful kind after what I done. The teacher we had last year, now, he would 'a' slapped my hands with a ruler, he was awful for rulers! But she just looked at me and I was so sorry for bein' bad that I could 'a' cried. And when she touched my hands—her hands is soft like the milkweed silk we find still in the fall—I just had to like her. I like her now and I'm goin' to be a good girl for her and when I grow up I wish I'd be just like her, just esactly like her."
David Eby waited until he was certain no harm was coming to Phœbe. He heard her say, "Now I do like you" and knew that the matter was being settled satisfactorily. Relieved, yet ashamed of his eavesdropping, he ran down the road toward his home.
"That teacher's all right," he thought. "But Jimminy, girls is funny things!"
He went on, whistling, but stopped suddenly as he turned a curve in the road and saw Phares sitting on the grass in the shelter of a clump of bushes.
The older boy rose. "David," he said sternly, "you're spoiling Phœbe Metz with your petting and fooling around her. What for need you pity her when she gets kept in for being bad? She was bad!"
"She was not bad!" David defended staunchly. "That Mary Warner makes me sick. Phœbe's got some sense, anyhow, and she's not bad. There's nothing bad in her."