Phœbe Blair was like her father. Her eyes were gray-blue, and set so far apart on either side of her nose that the upper half of her face, at first glance, had the appearance of being, if anything, a trifle too wide—which made her firm little chin seem, correspondingly, a trifle too peaked. Her hair was light brown, thick to massiness, but straight save where it blew against the clear pink of her cheeks in slightly curling tendrils. Of her features, it was her mouth that challenged her eyes in beauty—a fine, sweet mouth that registered every mood of those grave and womanly eyes. As for her height, it was a matter of the greatest pride to her that she already reached to her father’s shoulder. But she was, despite her height, still the little girl—sailor hat on bobbed hair, serge jacket worn over blue linen dress, slim, brown-stockinged legs, and laced brown shoes.
Her father was thirty-seven. It seemed an almost appalling age to his small daughter. And yet he still had a boyish slenderness. He was tall, and straight, with a carriage that was noticeably military—acquired at the preparatory school to which his elder brothers had sent him. His hair, brown and thick like his daughter’s, was just beginning to show a sprinkling of gray at the temples. His eyes were Phœbe’s eyes—set wide apart, given to straight looking, and quick, friendly smiles. He had presented her with his straight nose, too, and his mouth. But his chin was firmer than hers, a man’s chin, and the chin of a man who, once having set forward on any course, does not turn back.
Phœbe thought him quite perfect. And she thought it wonderful that he should be a mining-engineer. “It’s a clean business,” he had told her once, when she was about ten years of age. “It takes a man into the big out-doors.” She had treasured up what he had said—turned it over in her mind again and again. And had come to feel that her father was entirely different from the men whom she met in her home—a man set wholly apart.
His profession explained to her his long absences from New York, and the fact that, in the last year or so, he had been compelled to make a club his headquarters during the period of his short stays in the city. “This place is so tiny,” Phœbe’s mother always said. “And all Daddy’s traps are at the Club.” It had never occurred to Phœbe to doubt anything that Mother told her. And did not her father fully corroborate this excuse of Mother’s? Phœbe longed to have her father stay at home when he arrived in town. But she never complained against his being away. Hers was a patient, a trusting, a sturdy little soul.
With her smile of reassurance, Phœbe had leaned toward her father, to speak confidingly. “You know, Daddy,” she began, “it seems so funny that Mother had me go the way she did. Don’t you think so?—without saying why she wanted me to leave, or—or anything? Did she say anything about it to you?”
“Well, you see,” her father answered, “having you go this way spared your dear little heart. No good-byes, or tears. But pretty soon Grandma’s, with Uncle Bob, and Uncle John, and a big garden, and a horse——”
“A horse!” marveled Phœbe.
“Oh, he’s an old horse, and he pulls the surrey. Because Uncle Bob won’t have a motor car—he wants to walk to and from the Court House, and keep down his weight, and——”
“Uncle Bob is fat?” Phœbe inquired.
“Well, stout. And Uncle John, being a clergyman, and a trifle particular, doesn’t believe ministers should rush around in automobiles. So the surrey is for Uncle John, but Grandma will let you drive for her sometimes. And there are ducks and chickens to feed, and big beds of flowers, and a tall, green hedge where the birds build their nests, and——”