Her father rose, and the smile in his eyes gave place to an expression of sudden pain. “I don’t doubt it,” he answered hastily. Then leaning to smooth back the hair from her brow, “You’re tired, aren’t you, darling? And so is Daddy. We’ll say good-night now, and in the morning there’ll be so much to see, and do, and talk about.”
“Yes, sir.”
He laid his cheek against hers, so babyish still. “God bless my daughter,” he said tenderly.
Her arms went round his neck then. “Oh, Daddy,” she implored brokenly, “how long will I be away from mother? Oh, Daddy, just one day and I miss her so!”
He soothed her. “I can’t tell, Phœbe,” he asserted. “But will you trust me to do the best that I know how?”
With her wide eyes upon him, he stood at the middle of the room, his right arm raised to put out the electric light. He pulled at the cord, and the room went dark. He felt his way to the door then, and went out with a last affectionate good-night which Phœbe answered cheerily enough.
But when the sound of his footsteps died away in the hall, she stared into the blackness, seeing him still there at the room’s center with his arm upraised. And her loneliness and loss she told silently to that picture of her father which still remained under the swinging globe in the blackness.
“I want Mother,” she said, over and over. “Oh, Daddy, I want to go back to New York, to Mother. Oh, Daddy, don’t leave me here without Mother.” Then, “Oh, Mother, if I could only be with you! Oh, dear, dear Mother!”
The tears came then,—tears of weariness as well as grief. And Phœbe, curled up in the wide bed, her face buried in the curve of an arm, sobbed herself to sleep.