Phyllis read them at the breakfast-table, and her face lighted up with such joy that Mrs. Dean noticed it in spite of the preoccupation her morning mail usually involved.
"Dear little Bab is actually engaged to Tom. Oh, I am so thankful!" Phyllis said in reply to Mrs. Dean's inquiry as to the cause of her happiness. "I am afraid, Mrs. Dean, that this means that I shall have to go home as soon as you can get ready to let me."
"For the holidays—not longer?" said the old lady, sharply.
"For always," said Phyllis, gently.
"I should like to know why your cousin's engagement involves breaking yours to me," said Mrs. Dean, disappointment and regret shining even from her eye-glasses and gray curls. "I have tried to make this a home to you, and I hoped to keep you until you should be ready to follow your exasperating 'Bab's' example."
"We had not a positive engagement to each other, dear Mrs. Dean. Please don't think I am breaking an agreement," said Phyllis, distressed. "You have been as good to me as you could be, and I love you gratefully for it; but they want me very much at home, and you won't blame me for liking to be there better than anywhere else, however dear the elsewhere may be."
"I suppose I can't blame you, but it is most disappointing and annoying. You sly little minx! I believe you only ran away to leave the field clear to this Babbie; and, now the danger is past, you are ready to throw me over," said Mrs. Dean, with sudden acumen.
Phyllis laughed, seeing her battle won. She had dreaded the day, and speculated as to the manner in which she should announce to her kind friend that her hour to leave her had come.
There were two weeks wanting to the arrival of Christmas day, and Phyllis was not to start homeward until the twenty-third. The time crawled by, in spite of the young friends who filled every spare moment with pleasure, trying to crowd into the unexpectedly brief time left them in which to enjoy Phyllis all the sight-seeing and visiting of a winter. She felt guilty, fond as she had grown of them all, to tell off each sunset, and count each moment by the beats of feverish pulses.