Phœbe

The train was already moving. Phœbe, with all the solemnity of her fourteen years, puckered her brows over the slip of yellow paper, winked her long lashes at it reflectively, a...

A rain was drenching the blackness of the night as the New York train reached the small city that was Phœbe’s destination. Her father had wakened her a little in advance of thei...

A fairy bell was tinkling. The clear tones were part of a dream so sweet, though afterwards not remembered, that Phœbe smiled in her sleep. The tinkling grew steadily louder. Ph...

There was something else which Phœbe did not understand. Walking, mittened and warmly clad, over the snow-crusted half-acre of Grandma’s garden, she gave herself up to conjectur...

Phœbe was very busy. With the wet half of an old handkerchief, she wiped off the top of her own desk most painstakingly; next, having dried it with the bit of worn linen kept in...

Phœbe spent much of that twenty-four hours in conjectures. And the final and pathetic conclusion to which she came was that she had done something wrong, something “awful bad,”...

Genevieve was Phœbe’s own age, but stockily built, with an up-turning Irish nose, reddish corkscrew curls, and freckles. She had a proud, conscious mouth, and her teeth were lar...

The suit-case packed, Phœbe sat down upon it—to think. She had known even as she took down and folded her dresses that she could not really run away. But the packing had served...

Now came the beginning of what was like a new era of life for Phœbe—an era in which, more keenly than ever before, she was to understand, and—to suffer. Up to now she had not by...

That night, at supper, Phœbe viewed the members of her family with a new eye—with a fresh understanding. And was thrilled, as well as gratified in her vanity, by the thought tha...

Phœbe thought about that, wondering what Uncle Bob meant. Something kept her from asking him. Was it the strange look on his face as he watched Miss Ruth go? Or was it the way i...

It hurt Phœbe cruelly. And the pain was a double one. For she suffered on her own account, imagining a nebulous figure intrude itself between her and the father she loved with s...

It was Grandma who came for Phœbe. And the latter saw that there was no smile on the kind old face, and that Grandma’s head was shaking very hard. Hand in hand, silently, the tw...

Phœbe knew a great deal about death. Had she not seen it thousands of times on the screen, and in nearly every conceivable form?—by fire and water, by famine, by the knife of th...

At once lessons were resumed, filling the morning hours of each week-day. And a strict program of driving was followed out each afternoon that the weather permitted. In conseque...

To Phœbe, Uncle Bob took on a new and intense interest. Heretofore, he had been just Uncle Bob, stout and jolly and loving, with certain unknown duties at the Court House, and h...

All the moving-picture heroines that Phœbe loved were responsible for her resolve to rescue Manila. The plan seemed an inspiration; and not in the least degree blameworthy—on th...

“You can’t tell anything by the way a day starts,” philosophized Phœbe, as she unlaced her shoes preparatory to going to bed; “because a wonderful day starts exactly like an ord...

Such straight looking out of those frank eyes, and such cool poise, was most disconcerting. Miss Simpson, with a smile that was wholly muscular, changed the subject by bending d...

Phœbe was killing time—yet pleasantly, with the aid of “Airy, Fairy Lillian.” She kept it boldly in her lap as this more formidable of her uncles paused beside her chair. She wa...

It was a glorious morning. The sun was not up yet, so the air was cool—even crisp; and Phœbe, making her way quietly through the rear gate and along that road used by the trades...

Phœbe opened her eyes. It was broad daylight. Another train was passing overhead, shutting out the sound of the voice. She raised herself a little, and peered to both sides.

“A person would think you’re first-cousin to a mule!” cried Uncle Bob. “What makes you so stubborn, Jim? Don’t you _see_ what you ought to do!—Oh, my goodness, the thing is all...

What was all wrong? What word did Uncle Bob want Daddy to say? And to whom? In particular, what was it that Uncle Bob wanted Daddy to do? And who, oh, who, was “_her_”?

Phœbe, standing at the center of her own room, slowly turned herself about, as if taking a farewell look at the big, old bed—so forbidding when contrasted with the dainty, bewre...

Miss Ruth had entered with a rush, to find Phœbe just emerging from the clothes-closet. Miss Ruth was breathless, and a little pale. Now she dropped the hat she was carrying, an...