How she longed to find out about it all, to tell some one all her terrors. Often at night she determined to go boldly to her father the very next morning. Just as often the light of the new day withered her resolution. “If only Mother were here,” she told herself. It was easy to confide anything to Mother. But she shrank from opening her heart to her father. What she wanted to know he knew, and could tell her if he wanted her to know.
Then she thought of Sophie. Uncle Bob was not a remote possibility, but Sophie was even more approachable. Phœbe broached her subject diplomatically. “I don’t see many people here, do I?” she inquired.
It was so casual that Sophie had no inkling of what lay beneath the innocent question. “You don’t lose much, neither,” was the grunted rejoinder. (Sophie held local society in high disdain.)
“I knew lots of ladies and gentlemen in New York,” Phœbe went on. “Because Mother has so many friends—beautiful ladies, that wear beautiful clothes. And gentlemen who are rich, and have cars, and bring me candy and things.”
Sophie was keenly interested. They were in Phœbe’s own room on this particular occasion (Phœbe feeling instinctively that she could get better results on her own territory), and Sophie was so eager to hear about New York, and the apartment, and the ladies, and the men, that she sat down, and asked many questions, only stopping, now and then, to go to the door to look out.
And Phœbe, nothing loath, answered every question—and more. So that Sophie was given a very fair and truthful account of life in the metropolitan apartment—that is, of the life that Phœbe saw between her early waking and her early bedtime.
At the end of this long talk, Sophie was summoned downstairs by Grandma’s hand-bell, a round, squat affair, like a school-teacher’s bell, which stood on a little table at the foot of the stairs. And a few minutes later, Phœbe, who had trailed down after the maid, came upon her in the library. Sophie was standing close to Grandma, and talking very low; and when Phœbe entered, the two moved apart, somewhat hastily, and Sophie smiled a conscious smile, and looked a little guilty, and began to talk more loudly than was necessary about her duties.
In that moment, Phœbe realized herself cut off from the one being in that big house of grown-ups with whom she had been making ready to share her little confidences. For now it was plain that Sophie could not be trusted.
One thought did not come to Phœbe, namely, that the strict watch kept upon her had anything to do with her mother.
If the thought had occurred, whom could she have asked? From the very first night of her arrival Phœbe had discovered that Grandma—dear, gentle Grandma, with her mild old eyes and her trembling head—did not care to talk to Phœbe about Mother. Neither did Uncle Bob, who was always so ready to chatter boyishly about all other matters that seemed of interest to his niece. As for Uncle John, she never considered mentioning Mother to him. For one day she had left Mother’s photograph on the mantelpiece in the sitting-room, and coming for it, she had seen Uncle John with the picture in his hand. When he discovered Phœbe beside him, he stared down at her, and the look in his eyes was not good to see. His lips were drawn back from his shut teeth, too,—as if he were enraged at the photograph. He almost flung it down, and went out with no word.