“I live very close.”
“And—and you’ll come to see me?” asked Phœbe, eagerly. What was it about Miss Ruth that she liked so well? Miss Ruth was grave. Her look was tender. The hands that held Phœbe’s were firm and cool.
“If you want me to come——”
“Oh, I do!”
“Then I’ll come.”
Phœbe rose upon tiptoe. “Could you come after supper, maybe?” she asked. “That’s—that’s always the lonesomest time.”
Miss Ruth nodded. “And perhaps Grandma will let us have a good talk together upstairs, before you go to sleep—will you, Mrs. Blair?”
“Phœbe loves stories,” answered Phœbe’s grandmother. “She misses the moving-pictures she used to see. And so if you’d tell her a story some evening, Ruth,——”
“Or,” put in Phœbe, quickly, “if you know some songs—if you’d sing to me, like mother used to sing. I—I like that.”
“I’ll come.” Miss Ruth kissed Phœbe again. “But you’ve Grandma, and Uncle John, and Uncle Robert, and—and your father——”