“If the folks find out you know,” continued Sophie, too concerned over her own danger to think about what Phœbe was saying, “why, it needn’t be me they blame. ’Cause almost anybody in town mighta told y’.”
Phœbe stared. “You mean everybody knows?” she demanded.
“Everybody ’round here, anyhow.”
“And I—I didn’t know!”
“I’m sorry I told y’.” Sophie turned away her face. She lifted a corner of her apron to an eye.
“Please!” begged Phœbe. “I won’t tell. Honest! Didn’t I promise? Only I’m—well, I hate to think about it. Everybody knew—but me.”
Sophie went then. She would answer no more questions, vowing she had already told everything she knew. She left Phœbe quite cast down. It was one thing to hear such thrilling things about herself, to realize that she had been the subject of those long and heated conferences that she knew had been carried on in the library, to understand that Grandma had shed tears over her. It was quite another to find out that the whole town knew. As far as Phœbe was concerned, finding that out simply spoiled everything.
And now, every week-day morning, she and Uncle John spent three hours together in the library. All of the three hours were not spent in actual study; that is to say, whenever Uncle John got impatient and wanted to turn to his own work, he permitted Phœbe to make herself comfortable on the big, old library couch and read whatever she liked. With the awakening of her emotions, what Phœbe liked to read about was love. She found some books by “The Duchess”. They were Uncle Bob’s, and they were full of romance. Phœbe devoured them—while across the room the clergyman toiled over a sermon that was, perhaps, concerned with Peter’s wife’s mother.
And every week-day afternoon Phœbe went driving. With such an unvarying program, she was able to live up to her determination that she would never permit herself—in that little, mean, gossiping town—to make a single friend. And certainly not now, since she knew that the whole town knew!
But she had scarcely made up her mind to remain cut off completely from everyone (she would punish them all!) when she made two friends. And both—though each was so different from the other—soon became very dear to her.