“I forgot,” she said. “I was so unhappy that I forgot. It has helped me, oh, so many times when we have had no money. Many times we have been snowed in on the mountain without food and it has always come. It saved us from the Lupos. I was lonesome and it brought me friends.” She glanced at the girls busily preparing lunch and at Ben and Percy talking in low voices on the porch.
“Don’t you think it will help you now?”
“It has left me. I can’t find it,” replied poor Phoebe. “It is because I am so frightened. It never comes if you are frightened.”
“My child,” said the good doctor, “you are worn out. You must have lunch and take a good rest. In the meantime we will do everything we can to find your father. Perhaps he has lost his way and is wandering in the woods somewhere.”
“No,” said Phoebe, shaking her head miserably, “he never loses his way. He knows the trails better than I do myself.”
The doctor himself brought Phoebe a tray of lunch. She was ravenously hungry.
“The poor little thing hasn’t eaten for hours,” he thought, glancing at her covertly, as he returned with a basin of water, a soft towel and Miss Campbell’s private bottle of eau de cologne. When she had finished eating, he made her stretch out on the divan while he gave her face and hands and wrists an aromatic bath. Never before had Phoebe been ministered to and waited on. She smiled at the doctor with dumb gratitude.
“When people are hungry and tired and discouraged, they have a pretty hard time holding on to their faith, Phoebe,” he said. “Even when they haven’t anything to worry about, it’s hard enough. You go to sleep now and I promise you we will start on the search for your father at once.”
Phoebe raised her eyes gratefully to his. In those clear brown depths she read strength, gentleness and sympathy. She felt she was looking into the face of an angel with a shiny bald head and shaggy red-gray eyebrows.
“I believe God sent you,” she said, and in a few moments dropped off into a deep exhausted sleep.