"Oh, David, that's a beauty!" she cried as she held up a scarf of pale blue crepe de chine. "I'll wear it to-night. Tell Mother Bab I thank her over and over. But I'll see her to-night and tell her myself; she'll be in at Commencement."
"She can't come, Phœbe. She's sorry, but she has one of her dreadful headaches and you know what that means, how sick she really is."
"Oh, Davie, Mother Bab not coming to my Commencement—why, I'm so disappointed, I want her there"—the tears were near the surface.
"She's sorry, too, Phœbe, but she's too sick when those headaches get her. Her eyes are the cause of them, we think now."
"And I'm horribly selfish to think of myself and my disappointment when she is suffering. You tell her I'll be up to see her in the morning and tell her all about to-night. You are coming?"
"Sure thing! Aunt Mary is coming over to stay with mother, but there is really nothing to do for her; the pain seems to have to run its course. She'll go to bed early and be perfectly all right when she wakes in the morning. Come on, now, cheer up, and get ready for that 'Over the Alps lies Italy.'"
"It's 'Beyond the Alps lies Italy,'" she corrected him. Her disappointment was softened by his cheerfulness.
"Ach, it's all the same," he insisted, and went off smiling.
To Phœbe that night seemed like a dream—the slow march down the aisle of the crowded auditorium to the elevated platform where the nine graduates sat in a semicircle; the sea of faces swathed in the bright glow of many lights; the perfume of the pink roses in her arm; the music of the High School chorus, and then the time when she rose and stood before the people to deliver her oration, "Beyond the Alps lies Italy."
She began rather shakily; the sea of faces seemed so very formidable, so many eyes looked at her—how could she ever finish! She spoke mechanically at first, but gradually the magic of the Italy of her dreams stole upon her, a singular softness crept into her voice, a mellowness like music, as she depicted the blue skies of the sunny land-of-dreams-come-true.