Phoebe Deane (Romance Classic). Grace Livingston Hill

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      " Hello, Phoebe," called Albert, as he turned to surrender his place at the comb and the looking-glass. " I say, Phoebe, you're looking like a rose this morning. What makes your cheeks so red ? Anybody been kissing you this early ? "

      This pleasantry was intended as a joke. Albert had never said anything of the sort to her before. She felt instinctively that Emmeline had been putting ideas about her and Hiram into his head. It almost brought the tears to have Albert speak in this way. He was so uniformly kind to her and treated her as if she were still almost a child. She hated jokes of this sort, and it was all the worse because of the presence of Alma and the hired man. Alma grinned knowingly, and went over where she could look into Phoebe’s face. Henry Williams, with the freedom born of his own social equality—he being the son of a neighboring farmer who had hired himself out for the season as there were more brothers at home than were needed—turned and stared admiringly at Phoebe.

      " Say, Phoebe," put in Henry, " you do look real pretty this morning, now if I do say it. I never noticed before how handsome your eyes were. What's that you said about kissing, Albert? I wouldn't mind taking the job, if it's going. How about it, Phoebe ? "

      Pleasantry of this sort was common in the neighborhood, but Phoebe had never joined in it, and she had always looked upon it as unrefined, and a form of amusement that her mother would not have liked. Now when it was directed toward her, and she realized that it trifled with the most sacred and personal relations of life, it filled her with horror.

      " Please don't, Albert!" she said, with trembling lips in a low voice. " Don't! I don't like it." And Alma saw with wonder, and gloated over the fact, that there were tears in Aunt Phoebe's eyes. That would be something to remember and tell. Aunt Phoebe usually kept her emotions to herself with the door shut too tight for Alma to peep in.

      " Not ? " said Albert, perplexed. " Well, course I won't if you don't like it. I was only telling you how bright and pretty you looked and making you know how nice it was to have you around. Sit down, child, and let's have breakfast. Where's your mother, Alma?"

      Emmeline entered with a flushed face, and a couple of cowed and dejected small boys held firmly by the shoulders.

      Somewhat comforted by Albert's assurance, Phoebe was able to finish her work and sit down at the table; but although she busied herself industriously in putting on the baby's bib, spreading Johnny's bread, handing Alma the syrup-jug, and preventing her from emptying its entire contents over her personal breakfast, inside and out, she ate nothing herself: for every time she raised her eyes she found a battalion of other eyes staring at her.

      Emmeline was looking her through, in puzzled annoyance and chagrin, taking in the fact that her well-planned matchmaking was not running as smoothly as had been expected. Albert was studying her in the astonishing discovery that the thin, sad little half-sister he had brought into his home, who had seemed so lifeless and colorless and unlike the bouncing pretty girls of the neighborhood, had suddenly become beautiful, and was almost a woman. Several times he opened his mouth to say this in the bosom of his family, and then the dignified poise of the lovely head, or a something in the stately set of the small shoulders, or a pleading look in the large soft eyes raised to him, held him quiet; and his own eyes tried to tell her again that he would not say it if she did not like it.

      Alma was staring at her between mouthfuls of mush, and thinking how she would tell about those tears, and how perhaps she would taunt Aunt Phoebe with them sometime when she tried to " boss," when ma was out to a sewing-bee. " Ehh! I saw you cry once, Aunt Phoebe! Ehh! Right before folks. EHH-HH! Cry baby! You had great big tears in your eyes, when my pa teased you. I saw um. Eh-hh-hh! " How would that sound? Alma felt the roll of the taunt now, and wished it were time to try it. She knew she could make Aunt Phoebe writhe sometime, and that was what she had always wanted to do, for Aunt Phoebe was always discovering her best laid plans and revealing them to Emmeline, and Alma longed sorely for revenge.

      But the worst pair of eyes of all were those of Henry Williams, bold, and intimate, who sat directly opposite her. He seemed to feel that the way had been opened to him by Albert Deane's words, and was only waiting his opportunity to enter in. He had been admiring Phoebe ever since he came there, early in the spring, and wondering that no one seemed to think her of much account, but somehow her quiet dignity had always kept him at a distance. But now he felt he was justified in making more free with her.

      " Did you hear that singing-school was going to open early this fall, Phoebe?" he asked, after many clearings of his throat.

      " No," said Phoebe, without looking up. That was rather disappointing to him, for it had taken him a long time to think up that subject, and it was too much to have it disposed of so quickly, without even a glimpse of her eyes.

      " Do you usually 'tend ? " he asked again, after a pause filled in by Alma and the little boys in a squabble for the last scrap of mush and molasses.

      " No!" said Phoebe again, her eyes still down.

      " Phoebe didn't go because there wasn't anyone for her to come home with, before, Hank, but I guess there'll be plenty now," said Emmeline, with a meaningful laugh.

      " Yes," said Phoebe, now looking up calmly without a flicker of the anger she was feeling. " Hester McVane and Polly said they were going this winter. If I decide to go I'm going with them. Emmeline, if you're going to dry those apples to-day I'd better begin them. Excuse me, please."

      " You haven't eaten any breakfast, Aunt Phoebe! Ma, Aunt Phoebe never touched a bite!" announced Alma, gleefully.

      " I'm not hungry this morning," said Phoebe truthfully, and went in triumph from the room, having baffled the gaze of the man and the child, and wrested the dart from her sister-in-law's arrow. It was hard on the man, for he had decided to ask Phoebe if she would go to singing-school with him. He had been a long time making up his mind as to whether he wouldn't rather ask Harriet Woodgate, but now he had decided on Phoebe he did not like to be balked in the asking. He sought her out in the wood-shed where she sat, and gave his invitation, but she only made her white fingers fly the faster round the apple she was peeling as she answered : " Thank you, it won't be necessary for you to go with me if I decide to go." Then as she perceived by his prolonged " H'm-m-m!" that he was about to urge his case she arose hastily, exclaiming: " Emmeline, did you call me ? I'm coming," and vanished into the kitchen. The hired man looked after her wistfully and wondered if he had not better ask Harriet Woodgate after all.

      Phoebe was not a weeping girl. Ever since her mother died she had lived a life of self-repression, hiding her inmost feelings from the world, for her world since then had not proved to be a sympathetic one. When annoyances came she buried them in her heart and grieved over them in silence, for she quickly perceived that there was no one in this new atmosphere who would understand her sensitive nature.

      Refinements and culture had been hers that these new relatives did not know nor understand. What to her had been necessities were to them foolish nonsense. She looked at Albert wistfully sometimes, for she felt if it were not for Emmeline she might perhaps in time make him understand and change a little in some ways. But Emmeline resented any suggestions she made to Albert, especially when he good- naturedly tried to please her. Emmeline resented almost everything about Phoebe. She had resented her coming in the first place. Albert was grown up and living away from home when his father married Phoebe's mother, a delicate, refined woman, far different from himself. Emmeline felt that Albert had no call to take the child in at all for her to bring up when she was not a " real relation." Besides, Emmeline had an older sister of her own who would have been glad to come and live with them and help with the work, but of course there was no room nor excuse for her with Phoebe there, and they could not afford to have them both, though Albert was ready to take in any stray chick or child that came along. It was only Emmeline's forbidding СКАЧАТЬ