“Are you—lonesome?” returned Grandma. And her head shook very much.
“I’d like to have Sophie go up with me,” Phœbe answered.
But when she and Sophie were upstairs, alone, and the latter had finished her pillow-beating, Phœbe asked no questions. She feared to; and she knew that Sophie would not go without some word, some hint.
It came. “Miss Simpson was in to see your Grammaw this afternoon,”—this casually, with a quick look; then, “Did you know it?”
Phœbe was equally adroit. “She was?” she asked indifferently.
“Yop. I don’t like that woman.”
Sophie went. And Phœbe, left behind in the dark, lay thinking. Miss Simpson had called! Uncle Bob had not mentioned it. Why? And why had Miss Simpson called? What had she told or asked? Phœbe knew that it was this visit which had made Uncle Bob decide against Phœbe’s continuing at the school.
If the five grown men and women in the big rooms below could have known how grievously Phœbe’s ignorance of any part of the real truth was torturing the child, then each, and all, would have hastened up the stairs to that little figure, turning and tossing, as the bewildered brain strove to arrive at facts. For though the facts were bad enough, Phœbe’s guesses were far more terrible. She did not pray, or weep. She lay and planned how she would run away—to Mother.
But she was quite herself in the morning. When she awoke, the sight of branches against her windows—lovely, green, tree-top branches, of sunlight streaming in, the songs of birds coming faintly, and loud cock-crows, all these drove away magically the fear and ache and loneliness of the night.
She remembered that she did not have to go to school—and was glad! Why, it was quite like a Saturday! Freedom, no sermons, no admonitions to be quiet of foot and voice! And had she not heard about some little new ducks that were about to hatch?