“Dear little daughter,” ran the telegram, “when you get this, fill a suit-case with a few things that you’ll need most, and leave with Daddy for Grandma’s.—Mother.”

The train was already moving. Phoebe, with all the solemnity of her fourteen years, puckered her brows over the slip of yellow paper, winked her long lashes at it reflectively, and pursed a troubled mouth. How strange that dear Mother should leave the New York apartment in mid-morning, with the usual gay kiss that meant short separation; and then in that same hour should send this message—this command—which was to start Phoebe away from the great city, where all of her short life had been spent, toward that smaller city where lived the Grandmother she had never seen, and the two Uncles—one a Judge and the other a clergyman—who, though her father’s own brothers, were yet strangers to their only niece!

Somehow, without having to be told, Phoebe had always understood that Mother did not like Grandma, or the Uncles, judicial and ecclesiastic. Then why was Mother, without a real farewell, and without motherly preparation in the matter of dress, and with no explanations, sending Phoebe to those paternal relations?

It was all very strange! It was mysterious, like—yes, like stories Phoebe had seen in moving-pictures.

Out of the gloom and clangor of the great station, the train was now fast winding its way, past lights that burned, Phoebe thought, like those in the big basement of the apartment house where she had lived so long. Now the coach was leaving one pair of rails for a new pair—changing direction with a sharp clicking of the wheels and a heavy swaying of the huge car’s body. And now the line of coaches was straightening itself to take, as Phoebe knew, that long plunge under the southward flowing Hudson.

She let the telegram fall to her lap and closed her eyes, with a drawing in of the breath. She was picturing all that lay above the roof of the car and the larger domed roof of the tunnel—first there was the river-bed, which the domed roof upheld; next, the wide, deep reach of water which, in turn, held up the ferries and any other passing ships; last of all, the sky, cloud-flecked and sun-lit, through which winged the birds. What a load for that narrow, domed roof!

Her father had been busy with the luggage, directing the porter about the disposal of the two suitcases while taking off his own overcoat and hat. But as he glanced down at Phoebe, he misunderstood the lowering of telegram and eyelids, and dropped quickly to a place beside her. His hand closed over hers, lovingly, and with a pressure that showed concern. “Phoebe?” he questioned tenderly.

She opened her eyes with a sudden reassuring smile. Though in the last three or four years her father had been absent from home long months at a time, so that during any year she might see him only seldom, and then for brief afternoons only, her affection for him was deep, and scarcely second to her love for her mother. Each visit of his was marked by gifts as well as by a holiday outing—to the Park, the Zoo, or some moving-picture theatre; so that gratitude and pleasure mingled with her happiness at seeing him. Also, his visits had, for her, the novelty and joy of the unexpected. He came from Somewhere—mysteriously; and went again, into an Unknown that Phoebe made a part of her day-dreams.

And so her love for him was tinged with something of the romantic. She was proud of him, and she thought him handsome. Her mother never exclaimed over him, but other people did. “Was that your father I saw you with yesterday?” they would ask; and when Phoebe said Yes, they would add, “Oh, but isn’t he good-looking!” All of which delighted Phoebe, who long since had compared him with the heroes she had seen pictured on the screen—which comparison was to the very great disadvantage of the film favorites. Her father was to her so gallant a figure that she often wondered at her mother’s indifference to him. But then mother herself was so lovely!

Phoebe Blair was like her father. Her eyes were gray-blue, and set so far apart on either side of her nose that the upper half of her face, at first glance, had the appearance of being, if anything, a trifle too wide—which made her firm little chin seem, correspondingly, a trifle too peaked. Her hair was light brown, thick to massiness, but straight save where it blew against the clear pink of her cheeks in slightly curling tendrils. Of her features, it was her mouth that challenged her eyes in beauty—a fine, sweet mouth that registered every mood of those grave and womanly eyes. As for her height, it was a matter of the greatest pride to her that she already reached to her father’s shoulder. But she was, despite her height, still the little girl—sailor hat on bobbed hair, serge jacket worn over blue linen dress, slim, brown-stockinged legs, and laced brown shoes.

Her father was thirty-seven. It seemed an almost appalling age to his small daughter. And yet he still had a boyish slenderness. He was tall, and straight, with a carriage that was noticeably military—acquired at the preparatory school to which his elder brothers had sent him. His hair, brown and thick like his daughter’s, was just beginning to show a sprinkling of gray at the temples. His eyes were Phoebe’s eyes—set wide apart, given to straight looking, and quick, friendly smiles. He had presented her with his straight nose, too, and his mouth. But his chin was firmer than hers, a man’s chin, and the chin of a man who, once having set forward on any course, does not turn back.

Phoebe thought him quite perfect. And she thought it wonderful that he should be a mining-engineer. “It’s a clean business,” he had told her once, when she was about ten years of age. “It takes a man into the big out-doors.” She had treasured up what he had said—turned it over in her mind again and again. And had come to feel that her father was entirely different from the men whom she met in her home—a man set wholly apart.

His profession explained to her his long absences from New York, and the fact that, in the last year or so, he had been compelled to make a club his headquarters during the period of his short stays in the city. “This place is so tiny,” Phoebe’s mother always said. “And all Daddy’s traps are at the Club.” It had never occurred to Phoebe to doubt anything that Mother told her. And did not her father fully corroborate this excuse of Mother’s? Phoebe longed to have her father stay at home when he arrived in town. But she never complained against his being away. Hers was a patient, a trusting, a sturdy little soul.

With her smile of reassurance, Phoebe had leaned toward her father, to speak confidingly. “You know, Daddy,” she began, “it seems so funny that Mother had me go the way she did. Don’t you think so?—without saying why she wanted me to leave, or—or anything? Did she say anything about it to you?”

“Well, you see,” her father answered, “having you go this way spared your dear little heart. No good-byes, or tears. But pretty soon Grandma’s, with Uncle Bob, and Uncle John, and a big garden, and a horse——”

“A horse!” marveled Phoebe.

“Oh, he’s an old horse, and he pulls the surrey. Because Uncle Bob won’t have a motor car—he wants to walk to and from the Court House, and keep down his weight, and——”

“Uncle Bob is fat?” Phoebe inquired.

“Well, stout. And Uncle John, being a clergyman, and a trifle particular, doesn’t believe ministers should rush around in automobiles. So the surrey is for Uncle John, but Grandma will let you drive for her sometimes. And there are ducks and chickens to feed, and big beds of flowers, and a tall, green hedge where the birds build their nests, and——”

“And when will Mother come?” interposed Phoebe, with an intonation which made plain her opinion that it would certainly take mother to make the suburban picture complete.

“Phoebe,” said her father, speaking with a new earnestness, “Mother is not very well, and she is planning to leave New York for a while, and go where she can get better.”

“I know she isn’t very well,” agreed Phoebe. “She coughs too much.”

“Exactly. You know, Mother’s health hasn’t been good for quite a while——”

“I know.”

“And she must have the change. I didn’t want to have you go, dear, to a strange city, where your mother has no friends, and might be very ill. So away you go to Grandma’s till everything is straightened out. And you’ll—— Oh, look at that automobile!—there! It’s keeping up with the train! My! My! but that’s considerable speeding!”

They talked of other things then,—of the homes past which they were rushing, the towns through which they glided and grandly ignored, except for a gingerly slowing down. Noon came, and with it a visit to the dining-car. Then the afternoon dragged itself along. Toward the latter half of it, Phoebe, worn by the excitement of the sudden departure, and lulled by the motion of the train, curled up on the green plush of the car seat and fell asleep, her short brown hair spread fanwise upon her father’s shoulder.

The afternoon went; twilight came. Still the train rushed on, carrying Phoebe northward toward that new home awaiting her. She slept a second time, after a simple supper. Her journey was to end shortly before midnight. For this reason her father judged it best that a berth should not be made up for her, but that she should rest as she had in the afternoon, her head on his breast.

She smiled as she slept, blissfully unaware that all at once her happy life was changing; that she was being uprooted like some plant; that a tragedy of which she was as yet mercifully ignorant had come forward upon her, wave-like and overwhelming, to sweep her forever from her course!