But her father never cared to linger when she pulled a little at his arm. Hopefully she had to admit that he did not seem to like any particular person.
Then one day real fear came to her—with a definite object for her jealousy. By chance she and her father stopped at the drug-store down the street—the drug-store to which she loved to hop and skip, the while she nonchalantly bounced the rubber ball. This day when she called for her ice-cream soda, the pretty young woman came forward as usual to wait on her. The pretty young woman seemed to know Phœbe’s father well—very well indeed—almost too well! She smiled across the counter at him: she said, “How are you?” familiarly: she even called him “Jim”.
Phœbe ate her ice-cream soda with a troubled heart. Her father did not eat anything. He talked with the pretty young woman. And the latter urged more ice-cream upon Phœbe when the tall glass was half empty. That aroused Phœbe’s suspicions. She declined a second helping. She understood the purpose behind a second helping! “She wants to get in with me,” Phœbe thought. “That’s because she likes Daddy.”
She left some of her soda in order to get him out of the store and away. And she came to hate the drug-store young woman. Once at the table she made fun of her—of her teeth. Her father said nothing, even seemed not to hear. Grandma said “Darling!” reprovingly. But Phœbe cared nothing about the reproof. There was something at stake—something terribly important. She determined never to go near that drug-store again.
This was more than mere thwarting; already the budding woman was plotting against a rival!
Next, she made a practice, when her father went down town, to go with him as far as that drug-store and see him well past it! And when she had kissed him good-bye at some corner, she returned with no glance toward that counter which had always yielded such generous sodas and sundaes.
One day Phœbe got a fright. The drug-store young woman ran out to them, to intercept them. Doctor Blair, she said, wanted to speak to Phœbe’s father on the drug-store telephone. Phœbe was forced to accompany her father into the place. But she went warily, and she declined to have a soda. She came away with fear. And when she was home once more she wrote her father a note.
“Dear Daddy,” it ran, “I don’t like the girl at the drug-store. You know what I mean. I hate her, I hate her, I hate her. Her grammar is bad. She says don’t instead of doesn’t, like Sophie. Darling, darling Daddy.”
She did not give him the note. It was fortunate that she did not. For the very next day, as she came homeward after seeing her father safe beyond that dangerous corner, here came the object of her hate. The girl was pushing before her a white perambulator. In the carriage was a big rosy baby.
Phœbe would have passed girl and baby without a look. But the former halted her. “Oh, Phœbe, you’ve never seen my little son,” she said.