"Oh, haven't I?" cried Phœbe, in broken accents. "Did either of you think what would happen to me if we all went back to 1876? Two years old! That's what I'd be! A little toddling baby, like Susan Mellick's Annie! Put to bed before supper—carried about in everybody's arms—fed on a bottle and—and perhaps—and perhaps getting spanked!"
With the last word, Phœbe burst into tears of mingled grief and mortification and rushed from the room.
The others dared not meet each other's guilty eyes. Droop gazed about the room in painful indecision. He could not bear to give up all hope, and yet—this unforeseen objection really seemed a very serious one. To leave the younger sister behind was out of the question. On the other hand, the consequences of the opposite course were—well, painful to her at least.
In his nervousness he unconsciously grasped a small object on the table upon which his left hand had been lying. It was a miniature daintily painted on ivory. He looked vacantly upon it; his mind at first quite absent from his eyes. But as he gazed, something familiar in the lovely face depicted there fixed his attention. Before long he was examining the picture with the greatest interest.
"Well, now!" he exclaimed, at length. "Ain't that pretty! Looks jest like her, too. When was that tuck, Miss Wise?"
"That ain't Phœbe," said Rebecca, dejectedly.
"Ain't Phœbe!" Droop cried, in amazement. "Why, it's the finest likeness—why—but—it must be yer sister!"
"Well, 'tain't. Thet pictur is jest three hundred years old."
"Three hundred—" he began—then very slowly, "Well, now, do tell!" he said.
"Phœbe's got the old letter that tells about it. The's a lot of 'em in that little carved-wood box there. They say it come over in the Mayflower."