Jenny had thought that was rather a queer thing for Phoebe to say....
Jenny went out to go to the delicatessen around the corner, to buy a snack for them to eat, private, away from the rest of the girls, it being Sunday morning. She'd bring in a Sunday paper, too.
When she returned, Phoebe didn't seem to be in the room. Jenny felt that something was wrong, had felt it all along, anyhow....
She heard a sort of gasping and gurgling....
She found Phoebe on the floor, two-thirds under the bed. Her eyes were rolled back to the whites from agony. A creamy froth was on her mouth. And all her mouth and chin and pretty white neck were burned brown with the carbolic acid she had drunk.. a whole damn bottle of it.
Jenny dropped on her knees by Phoebe and called out her name—loud.... "Phoebe, why don't you speak to me!" Took her head in her lap and it only lolled. Then she began screaming, did Jenny, and brought the whole house up. And the madame had shouted:
"Shut up, you bitch, do you want people to think someone's gettin' killed? Ain't we in bad enough already?"
"So Phoebe came to a bad end," commented Lan, "as we always thought she would."
The nearest I came to having my long-cherished revenge on Landon: