A fairy bell was tinkling. The clear tones were part of a dream so sweet, though afterwards not remembered, that Phœbe smiled in her sleep. The tinkling grew steadily louder. Phœbe waked, saw where she was, and raised her head to listen. The bell was outside. Persistent and musical, its ringing called Phœbe from her bed to a window. She peered down through a gap in the storm shutters.
A messenger boy on a bicycle was coming up the curving drive that led from the front gate to the house. The rain was over. The sun glinted on the metal of his wheel. He disappeared from Phœbe’s view under a square, flat roof that was one story below her window.
She ran to put on her shoes and stockings. She splashed her face with the icy water in the flowered bowl, and dressed at top speed. A messenger boy conveyed only one thing to her: a telegram from her mother.
She was right. When she came racing down to ask, her father was standing by the front door in the big hall, the telegram open in his hand.
He did not permit Phœbe to read the wire, but put it away in the leather case that held his paper money. And he did not reply to it by another telegram when the messenger boy reminded him that there was an answer.
“I’ll write your mother,” he explained to Phœbe.
After breakfast he sat down to write. That first day at Grandma’s, Phœbe learned that during each week-day morning the library was sacred to Uncle John. So Phœbe’s father wrote at Grandma’s desk in the sitting-room, with Phœbe writing at the sewing-table close by.
Her father’s letter was short. His face was stern as he wrote it. Then he paced the floor. Phœbe had often seen him like that in New York. She understood that he was frequently worried over business. And she understood business worries, because she had seen several worried business men in the “movies.” Usually they stood over curious machines out of which ran a long narrow strip of paper. And as a rule they ended by committing suicide with a pistol. Phœbe stole anxious glances toward her father as she wrote.
“Darling, darling Mother,” ran her letter, “I did as you said. But I hope you’re going to tell me to come home right away. It’s nice here, only I want you, and I hope I’ll be back before Saturday. Your loving daughter, Phœbe.”
It was a short letter, since it occurred to Phœbe that perhaps a little of her father’s pacing might be due to impatience. She was not a rapid penman.