PHRONSIE passed slowly up the path to the little brown house door. The last of the party of guests at “The Oaks” had just departed. She turned the key in the lock and went in, picking up, on her way, the playthings the children had left the afternoon before, strewn on the old kitchen floor.
Phronsie sat down on a low seat, and leaned her head in Mamsie’s old rocking-chair. Outside, a little gray squirrel ran up and down the big apple-tree, and peered in the window chattering loudly; the china basket of sweetbrier noiselessly dropped a petal now and then on the old kitchen table, and the clock ticked away busily; and still Phronsie did not move.
“Mamsie,” she was saying softly to herself, “is it very wicked for me to want to see Roslyn? I will stay with Grandpapa; but oh, I want so to just see Roslyn.”
And after a long pause she said, “I could not ask Grace all she knows about him—oh, to think that he is her cousin! because that would not be right to Grandpapa, who did not want me to see him. But oh! I cannot help thinking of him; and is it very wicked, Mamsie, just to think of him?”
Still Phronsie did not move. When she did lift her head, there were no traces of tears upon her cheek, only her hands were clasped upon her knee, and a white line settled around the drooping mouth.
“Dear Grandpapa,” she said softly, “he has done everything for us, and all his comfort is in us. He needs me; and I’ll try again not to think of Roslyn. But oh, Mamsie!” She laid her head once more upon the old cushion in the rocking-chair, and kept it there for a long time.
Old Mr. King had gone to town in the early morning train with Jasper. Having not only a great delight in Mr. Marlowe, so that he seized every possible opportunity to be with him, Mr. King had absorbed such a violent pride in the whole publishing business as conducted by Marlowe and King, that he had become a silent partner, and contributed such a generous amount of funds as to make possible the great breadth and extension that had been longed for by its founder.
Phronsie leaned her head upon Mamsie’s old rocking-chair.
“And I don’t want anything to say about the working of the capital,” the old gentleman had cried. “Gracious, man alive,” to Mr. Marlowe, “I don’t know anything about business; and I can trust you, who have brought it up to this.”