CHAPTER XIV
THE LITTLE BLIND GOD OPENS HIS EYES
WHILE Phyllis was having, as she said in her letters, a pleasant amphibious summer, the rest of the Wyndhams were staying in town for the first time in their lives. New York is not as bad a place during the heated months as people think it who fly from the first touch of the mounting sun. Except for the noise, even Mrs. Wyndham did not find it uncomfortable, and the noises could be forgotten while she rested and read in their little dining-room, the depth of the apartment away from them.
Jessamy and Barbara discovered that there was much to be enjoyed in early rising for walks in the park; still more, in trips for which they had started betimes to take a car at the Bridge and go down to the sea, bowling along at a tremendous rate after they had passed the crowded Brooklyn streets, and getting cool and invigorated as the swift flight of the car blew their hair back from their faces with a wind salt from the ocean.
Nor were the long sails up the wonderful Hudson less than a revelation of delight, especially to artistic Jessamy, whose soul reveled in beauty such as the whole world can hardly equal—beauty they had heretofore missed, because it lay so near to them and they had wandered away in summer to fashionable resorts.
Ruth took her vacation like a dissecting-map, she said, in little bits, which, fitted together, would make a whole of more than two weeks;—she filled the place that would have been Phyllis's in the excursions of that summer. And Tom, graduated now into a full-fledged Doctor of Medicine, with a degree and a diploma, and everything ready for a large practice, except his contract with an undertaker, as he himself declared—Tom was the escort and cicerone on every trip, with Nixie, his hair clipped for the summer, to complete the party when its destination was one that allowed the presence of little dogs. Jessamy, watching the course of affairs, with double eagerness for Bab's happiness and Phyllis's return, sometimes was almost completely discouraged by the behavior of her trying sister. Since the theatricals Tom had been turning with constantly increasing evidences of liking to Babbie, and Jessamy began to feel quite certain that his dawning fancy for Phyllis, nipped timely in the bud, would blossom into real love for wayward Bab, if that young person would allow it to do so. But Barbara behaved in such a way that Jessamy wondered that Tom could be patient with her, and, much more, that he could find attraction in her thorniness.
"She is Barbie, not Babbie, mama," Jessamy said, with tears of impatience in her eyes, one night when the four young people had returned from an afternoon at Glen Island. Now that Phyllis was writing so cheerfully, and the choice she had made seemed to be turning out well, for her at least, Jessamy had told her mother Phyllis's motive in going, for she longed to have her unselfish little cousin held at her true worth by all who were dearest to her.
"You have not the slightest idea of how Bab behaved to Tom to-day, and he was a perfect saint in patience and kindness," Jessamy continued. "She is driving away her own happiness in spite of Phyllis's sacrifice for her. You know it would have been lovely for Tom and Phyllis to have cared for each other, and now Bab is going to offend him beyond pardon, and we shall lose the dear boy altogether. I feel so sorry for Tom I can hardly keep from saying: 'Oh, Tom dear, just please marry me, and let that naughty girl go!'"
"That would be a singular performance on the part of my dignified elder daughter," laughed her mother, "and rather a useless one, because, you see, Tom doesn't want to marry you. Perhaps he will never want to marry Babbie, so try not to worry, Jessamy. I should be glad when the day comes that I must give one of you up, if it could be into the hands of as trustworthy a man as Tom; but I am in no hurry to meet the day, so let matters take their course, Jessamy, my dear."
"They aren't taking their course," sighed Jessamy. "And you are forgetting, mama, that Bab is so dreadful because she really likes Tom so very much. Of course he may never want to marry her; that is what bothers me. I should think it would be a miracle if he did. She has made up her mind to be true to her name, and has put a barbed wire fence all around herself. I wish I could get her straightened out, and bring Phyllis home, and all be happy again."