"Let matters take their course, Jessamy," said her mother again. "Barbara is very young; I really believe, on the whole, I am glad not to see my baby with a lover—even Tom."
Jessamy had not exaggerated Barbara's freakishness toward unoffending Tom. There were days when she treated him quite tolerantly, sometimes even let him get glimpses of the sweet, sunny Barbara he had first known; but most of the time she was sharp of tongue, uncertain in disposition, unjust, and actually pert. The receipt of a small service from Tom was enough to plunge her into saucy, school-girl sarcasm that was so unlike herself, so unworthy of her, that Jessamy held her breath lest she not only offended, but, worst of all, disgusted Tom; and for disgust Jessamy had heard there was no cure.
The pitiable part of it was that poor little Babbie evidently hated herself for being so wayward and naughty, and Jessamy often saw her turn away to hide her tears after an especially vicious attack on Tom, to which she was apparently impelled by a force stronger than her will and judgment.
For a long time Tom bore this treatment with dignified patience, struggling hard to keep his promise to Phyllis and regain the little Bab he knew and cared for. Then Jessamy saw that he was letting Babbie severely alone, studying her with pained surprise in his honest eyes, and she hoped that the study might give him a clue to the cause of Bab's transformation. For, she thought, she is exactly like Beatrice herself; and when Benedick suspected that she snubbed him because she cared for him, he began to care for her. But Tom was far too modest and inexperienced to construe the little active verb, with its moods, which he was studying, by any such rule. He decided that Barbara had found him a nuisance, and wanted to drop his acquaintance; so, hurt to the core, he silently acquiesced in her decision, and the Wyndhams knew him and Nixie but rarely.
As weeks went by, and Tom's sole visit had been to herself when Jessamy and Barbara were known to be out at lectures which they were attending, Mrs. Wyndham began to share Jessamy's feeling that if something were not done a possession more precious than the wealth they had lost might drift away from her girls forever. Mrs. Wyndham was thoroughly unworldly; it would be horrible to her even to think of making a marriage for her children from ambitious motives; but she realized how rarely in a long life one finds a true friend; and she began to feel that it would not do to sit passive while Babbie drove Tom away. Besides, it was dreadful to know that the poor boy was feeling that his friends were changed to him, who had never been less than devoted to all of them in the hard days at the "Blackboard," and ever since.
That night Mrs. Wyndham went into Bab's room in the dark to find her crouching, a forlorn little heap of misery, in her chair, sobbing under her breath lest Jessamy hear in the next room. Her mother gathered her up in her arms, and sat down in the rocking-chair, Babbie half in, half off her lap, and rocked and cuddled her without a word. For a while Bab cried tempestuously, but after a time the clasp of the arms which had always soothed her childish griefs quieted her; indeed, Babbie's grief might be of a sentimental nature, but she was a child still.
When she was calm enough to listen Mrs. Wyndham said: "Now, my little Babbie, you are unhappy because you have been a saucy little Bab, and have driven away with cruel injustice the best friend you and Jessamy and Phyllis have, except one another. It is a pity, but it is something to set right, not to cry over. We will send a note of apology to Tom, and we will tell him—I will write it—that Babbie is dreadfully contrite over her whimsies of the summer, but that they arose from little private worries of her own, which she was unjust enough to visit upon him. And Tom will come, and Barbara will be kind and cordial, first because she has absolutely no right to treat Tom rudely; secondly, because she will have too much regard for her dignity as a young woman, not a capricious child, to give way to her impulses."
"It's too late, mama," moaned Bab. "Tom asked me what was wrong, and I told him nothing, but that I was tired of seeing the same faces all the time. And then he stopped coming. And, Madrina," she added, starting up with sudden resolution to be honest, "I have acted as I have just because he liked Phyllis, and I was afraid—oh, I was afraid he would think she thought I liked him—too much, you know, and so had gone away!"
"What a foolish Babbie!" said her mother, stroking her hair. "Tom does not care more for Phyllis than for you. He was beginning to turn to her, but she slipped away in the beginning, and Tom has found my little Babbie more than he realized, now that he has been thrown with her more. Tom would never dream Phyllis, or any one else, suspected you of liking him too well; he is not a coxcomb, but a straightforward, honest young fellow, who loved us all. He is hurt and angry that one of us could be so capriciously unjust to him. You have no right—no moral right, Barbara—to let this go on another day. And if our dearest Phyllis hoped to further your happiness in going away, you surely can do no less than love her better than ever, and return her goodness to Tom."