“Uh-uh,” denied Manila. “I’m waitin’ till I’m sure Paw is back. If Mrs. Botts licks me I want him to see. Then I yell hard, and the folks on either side call Paw up on the phone.”
When Manila went, Phœbe experienced real terror. At the supper-table, not being able to eat, she confided her fears to Grandma and her uncles. Whereupon Uncle Bob promptly called the Botts home up on the telephone. Mrs. Botts answered. She seemed as quiet as possible, he said.
“But she’ll bide her time, the vixen!” he added. “And Manila oughtn’t to leave home like that. I have my hands full enough as it is.”
Phœbe said nothing. What if he knew that she and Manila had planned, when the time should be ripe, so to tantalize Mrs. Botts that the latter would invade the Blair house, there to serve to Phœbe’s father as a horrible example of a real step-mother?
“Just let the mean old thing keep away from here,” said Phœbe, by way of tactfully turning Uncle Bob from even a suspicion of that plan.
“My dear niece!” chided Uncle John.
CHAPTER XV
At once lessons were resumed, filling the morning hours of each week-day. And a strict program of driving was followed out each afternoon that the weather permitted. In consequence of which Phœbe had little time to herself, and none for Manila.
“They don’t want me to have even one friend,” Phœbe concluded resentfully. “And Uncle John wants me to forget Mother.”
He was leading Phœbe from chapter to chapter of “A Child’s History of England,” each chapter, to her mind, being dryer and more tiresome than the last. She determined that no one should make her forget her mother, and lengthened her prayers, therefore, saying the first one reverently to God, but always, the portrait before her, making her final, and longer one, to her mother.