"So are both your friends very nice, Phyllis," returned Jessamy, turning out the gas, as she spoke, so Phyllis could not see her face.
CHAPTER XVII
THE LADY OF THE SCALES
WHILE Phyllis was climbing the steep hill of fame by the path of her little stories, events in her home were not at a standstill.
The pleasantest and most tangible thing that had happened was that Jessamy had been asked by the editor of the magazine which had bought her illustrations and Phyllis's two stories, to illustrate for him other work besides that done by her cousin.
Jessamy was very busy and happy during these days. She was blossoming out into fuller, more perfect beauty; her eyes were alight as with a secret joy, her smile grew every day sweeter and more lingering; in a word, Jessamy was leaving the last shadow of that mysterious valley of young maidenhood, and passing into the full sunshine of womanhood. It was two years since the trouble, which was every day less of a regret to the Wyndhams, had come to them; or, it would be two years when May rolled around again, and it was then March. Jessamy and Phyllis were twenty; they had a right to enter upon their kingdom. Barbara, too, at nineteen and engaged, was grown up. Mrs. Wyndham, with the gratitude of a mother who had brought her children safely through the development of character into sweet and good women, yet with the regret of a mother in losing her little girls, realized that her three little maids were little no longer.
It was March, and the season was forward after the heavy snows of the winter. The song-sparrow was lilting in the park, the twigs and buds were showing red and swelling on many trees and shrubs.
There had been, of late, mystery in the atmosphere of the little apartment, from share in which Mrs. Wyndham felt herself excluded. Evidently the girls were in a conspiracy of some sort; but their mother did not give the matter much thought, knowing that when they were ready they would confide in her, and feeling quite certain if she were not told it was because the plan worked better for her in ignorance of it.