Phoebe took it.
'It's all right. Tell him to leave it.'
The girl, noticing her agitation and her shaking fingers, ran down the hill again to give the message. Phoebe carried the telegram upstairs to her room, and locked the door.
For some moments she dared not open it. If it said that he refused to come?—that he would never see her again? Phoebe felt that she should die of grief—that life must stop.
At last she tore it open:
Sending messenger to-day. Hope to follow immediately. Welcome.
She gasped over the words, feeling them in the first instance as a blow—a repulse. She had feared—but also she had hoped—she scarcely knew for what—yet at least for something more, something different from this.
He was not coming, then, at once! A messenger! What messenger could a man send to his wife in such a case? Who knew them both well enough to dare to come between them? Old fiercenesses woke up in her. Had the word been merely cold and unforgiving it would have crushed her indeed; but there was that in her which would have scarcely dared complain. An eye for an eye—no conscience-stricken creature but admits the wild justice of that.
But a 'messenger'!—when she that was lost is found, when a man's wife comes back to him from the dead! Phoebe sat voiceless, the telegram on her lap, a kind of scorn trembling on her lip.
Then her eye caught the word 'welcome,' and it struck home. She began to sob, her angry pride melting. And suddenly the door of her room opened, and there on the threshold stood Carrie—Carrie, who had been crying, too—with wide, startled eyes and flushed cheeks. She looked at her mother, then flew to her, while Phoebe instinctively covered the telegram with her hand.