Only an Incident

by Grace Denio Litchfield

Phebe kissed her very quietly, and then crept into Olly's room, and sat down on his bed. "Olly, dear," she murmured, "are you asleep?"

The little fellow sprang up and flung his arms closely around her neck, embracing collar, ruffles, and ribbon in one all-comprehensive destruction.

"Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me?" whispered Phebe, half laughing and half crying, as she strained him to her heart. "Oh, Olly dear, I do want some one just to say so!"

"I do, I do, I do, and I do!" said Olly, with a bear's hug at each assertion. "Blest if I don't. That's what Mr. Upjohn said when I asked him if he didn't want some taffy. 'Blest if I don't.' I guess it's a swear, 'cause he said I mustn't tell Mrs. Upjohn he said so, not to the longest day I lived. The longest day won't come now till next year, the twenty-first of June. That's the longest day, ain't it? Mr. Halloway taught me that. My, don't he know a lot! I'm going to be like him when I'm a man. That's who I'm going to be like. And I'm going to love you always. He loves you too, doesn't he, Pheeb?"

"No, dear," answered Phebe, still laughing and crying together, and rocking gently back and forth with the boy in her arms; "he doesn't at all. There doesn't any body really love me, I think, but just you. But you do, don't you, dear?"

"Bet on it!" said Olly, with forcible vulgarity.

"God bless you," said Phebe, very softly, as she put the boy back in the bed, and laid her wet cheek on his. "God bless you now and always."

"Forever and ever, amen," whispered Olly back, with an impression that Phebe was saying her prayers over him. "And oh, I say, Pheeb, can't you let us have some of that jelly cake with raisins in it, to take with us for luncheon to-morrow?"

And Phebe promised she would, and laughed and went away feeling, somehow, a little comforted.

And so Gerald and Olly and De Forest all disappeared from the scene together, and shortly after the Dexters went to Morocco on a visit, and the Masters adjourned to Bethany to do their fall shopping; and there were whisperings around that something was wrong; there was more and more talk of the fever; of how it ought to be checked, and why it had not been checked, and what would be the dire consequences if it were not checked. The summer guests all slipped quietly away, leaving Joppa alone to its growing trouble. Every day brought some new case, sometimes a death, and people began to look suspiciously at each other in the streets and to avoid each other on the flimsiest pretexts. Miss Lydia cried helplessly in her room and said she was sure she should take it and die of it. Mr. Hardcastle found he was too busy at home to have time for neighborly visits, and went around the block rather than pass a door where he saw the doctor's gig. When one has a family, one owes it duties that should not be neglected. Mrs. Upjohn declared the panic to be ridiculous. She shouldn't be scared away by a red flag, like a crow from a cornfield. There had never been a case of typhoid known in Joppa, and places were like people, they never broke out with diseases that were not already in their constitutions. It was all arrant nonsense. However, she was perfectly willing that Maria should make that proposed visit to her aunt in Boston if she liked, and it was quite proper that Mr. Upjohn, in the character of gallant father, should escort her there; the girl couldn't go alone. So every day saw some new flight from the village. The doctors began to look overworked and very grave, and Mr. Hardcastle appeared less and less outside his gates, and took to walking always in the middle of the streets, whence he could wave a salutation to his passing friends without stopping to speak to them. Dick said he'd like to see the fever catch him, and pursued the rough tenor of his ways fearlessly as of old, though he assured his anxious father that it was wholly because Nellie Atterbury lived in the healthiest quarter of the town, that he spent so much of his time at her house. There was no use denying or qualifying it. An epidemic of typhoid fever had stolen upon Joppa as a thief in the night, and there was no knowing what house it would not enter next, to rob it of its dearest and best.