She sprang up. She kissed her mother’s photograph with a smiling kiss. She sang over her dressing. She showed a sunny face at the breakfast-table, where Uncle John ate silently, and Uncle Bob sat behind his paper. The night before, what a sense of guilt was hers! It was gone. Her good-morning was merry. She winked back saucily at Sophie’s wink, and ate her oatmeal with good appetite. Grief and fourteen, how short was their stay together! For she was entirely overlooking the fact that this was the day she was intending to run away!
“And what’s my little daughter figuring on doing this morning?” her father asked; “—lucky Phœbe, who doesn’t have to be shut up in school!”
Phœbe thought perhaps the ducks were hatched by now.
“Hatched and swimming in Uncle Bob’s pool,” announced Grandma. “And the poor mother-hen is so worried——!”
At that, Uncle Bob came out from behind his paper—came out like the sun from behind a cloud. And he had another cup of coffee, and threw a violet across the table to Phœbe, and pretended to be shocked at the conduct of the ducks. So that Phœbe laughed, and Grandma and Daddy smiled—yes, even Uncle John smiled. Breakfast was cheerful.
Gray eyes thoughtful, Phœbe fell to contrasting it with breakfasts in New York; the contrast was the sharper when each of Grandma’s three sons pushed back his chair in turn and gave his mother a hearty kiss. What a lot of kissing went on at Uncle Bob’s! Everyone kissed Grandma good-morning and good-night. In New York, Daddy kissed Phœbe, and Mother kissed Phœbe: each other they did not kiss.
Phœbe thought of this again later in the day, when Genevieve came. For it was Genevieve who delivered the blow!
CHAPTER VII
Genevieve was Phœbe’s own age, but stockily built, with an up-turning Irish nose, reddish corkscrew curls, and freckles. She had a proud, conscious mouth, and her teeth were large. Her eyes were almost as red as her hair, and small. Around them the skin crinkled up when she laughed, shutting them away completely. When she had something important to say, she had a trick of throwing her head back with a toss of the curls. Phœbe had noted the trick. Once or twice she had even practiced it in front of her mirror!
Genevieve was more overdressed than usual for her call on Phœbe. She had a well wrapped package under one arm, and she wasted no time in delivering it.