"But this isn't the end of things. When I'm back, as I shall be for a day or two frequently, I'll always let you know; or you can run over to the city and do a theater with me whenever you like. So let's be cheerful about everything."
The passing of her trunk from her father's house to her uncle's was not neglected by the gossips. Her three aunts noted it, and excoriated Kirkwood and Amzi. They took care that every one should know how they felt about the transfer of poor, dear Phil (on whom they had lavished their love and care for years, to the end that she might grow up respectable, etc., etc.) to a roof that sheltered her Jezebel of a mother.
"That was nice of him," said Lois, when Phil explained her coming. "How's your father getting on these days?"
"Oh, quite well!" Phil replied.
She was establishing herself in a room adjoining her mother's. Lois, in a flowered silk kimona, commented upon Phil's clothes as they were hauled from the trunk. Her opinions in the main were touched with her light, glancing irony.
"I'll wager Jo bought that walnut-stain effect," she remarked, pointing an accusing finger at a dark waist. "That has Josephine stamped on it. Poor old soul!"
Her manner of speaking of her sister set Phil to giggling. Mrs. Waterman had bought that particular article over Phil's solemn protest, and she now sat on the bed and watched her mother carry the odious thing gingerly by the collar to the door and fling it in the direction of the back stairs.
Lois brought from her own room a set of silver toilet articles and distributed them over the top of Phil's bureau.
"I forgot all about these, Phil; but they fit in handily right here. A little self-indulgence of my own, but my old ones are good enough. Oh, please don't!" she exclaimed, as Phil began to thank her. "Why shouldn't you have them? Who has a better right to them, I'd like to know!"
Whereupon she began experimenting with the nail-polisher from Phil's set.