Phoebe 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 reserve, she cleared out the shelf of the desk, dusting each book as she did so, and then washed and dried the shelf. Last of all, she took out her inkwell, cleaned the lid of it, refilled it carefully from a nearby bottle, and replaced it without the loss of a purple drop. All the while she hummed a little, and was so intent upon her work that she seemed not to know that the other girls were leaving one by one—until no one was left with her in the high room, which once had been a music-room, save a teacher, seated quietly at her desk.

But Phoebe, despite all her earnest washing-up, had only been killing time. She had not glanced up from her work because she did not care to meet the eyes, or note the whispers, of the other girls. She would not pass out with them across the terrace which fronted the big house for fear they might not walk with her, or call a pleasant good-bye. She was waiting, busy meanwhile, until she could leave Miss Simpson’s alone.

The teacher, setting her own desk to rights, cast an inquiring look at Phoebe every now and then. When the last fellow-pupil was gone, Phoebe rose and came forward to the platform, a little timidly. In front of the big desk, she halted. Her cheeks were pink—too pink. Her lips were pressed together. But her eyes smiled bravely. Back went one brown shoe, and the slender, stockinged legs bent in a curtsey.

“Good-night, Miss Fletcher,” said Phoebe, politely.

“Good-night, dear.” Miss Fletcher’s voice was curiously husky. And as Phoebe turned to leave, the teacher rose abruptly, banged a ruler upon the green slope of oil-clothed board in front of her, opened and shut a drawer noisily, and dabbed at her eyes alternately with the back of a hand.

But Phoebe was going cheerily enough. She said her usual good afternoon to the black-clad, white-aproned maid at the front door, did a hop-skip across the patterned bricks of the wide terrace, and went trippingly down the winding steps that led to the gate and the street.

A limousine was waiting there—a long, gleaming, tawny vehicle with brown trimmings. Phoebe recognized the motor. It was Genevieve Finnegan’s, and it called for Genevieve every school afternoon. Phoebe had seen other cars of the same color flashing hither and thither through the town. The Finnegans, it was rumored, had five automobiles in their big garage. And Genevieve had been heard to say, though it was scarcely believable, that of the five cars one was kept solely for the use of the Finnegan servants! Servants! And Uncle John still clinging to a surrey and a horse with no check-rein and a long tail!

As Phoebe sped down the last half-dozen steps to the sidewalk, she did not even raise her eyes to the proud countenance of the smartly liveried Finnegan chauffeur. All day she had been troubled, knowing herself covertly discussed, and slyly ignored. Now, of a sudden, at sight of this huge testimony to many dollars and much power, she felt strangely helpless, alone, poor, and ashamed.

Her unwonted attention to her desk had made her a quarter of an hour late. She knew that Uncle John and Grandma were, even now, keeping an eye on the clock, or peering out of a window to see whether or not she was coming through the driveway gate. She hurried along, eyes straight ahead.

As she walked, her lips moved. Over and over, she was repeating certain things that she had heard the girls say that day—and certain things that she had said in reply. For instance, Olive Hayward had spoken of the graduation exercises, to be held early in June. And when Phoebe had interposed, but very meekly, to inquire what part the younger pupils would take, Olive, who was fully as round, Phoebe decided, as Uncle Bob himself—Olive had said, with a queer glance at the girls grouped with her, “Oh, do you think you’ll still be here?” “I think I will,” Phoebe had answered, and the girls had laughed!

Why?

And then there were other things. Phoebe revolved around the end of the home gate, closed it even as she started up the walk, bumped in surprise against the new screen door put up that day against winged intruders, sped along the hall, taking off the serge coat as she went, and entered the living-room, breathless, casting aside her hat with one hand and her coat with the other. She seized the squat stool upon which Uncle Bob, when reading, liked to rest his feet, carried it to a high, old mirror that had, in its time, reflected Grandma in her bridal gown, and stood upon it.

“Well, young lady?” It was Uncle Bob, from the far corner where was the telephone.

Phoebe was turning herself before the mirror—now this way, now that. “Excuse me, please,” she begged; “just a minute—something—I must see—right away—very important—before I change.”

“I should say!” agreed her uncle, watching her curiously. “What seems to be the matter?”

She came about to face him. Her brows were knit. Her eyes were troubled. “That’s just what—what I don’t know,” she admitted. “My dress is all right.—Is there anything wrong with my dress?”

He got up and crossed to her. His underlip was thrust out, as if he were angry. But he answered lightly enough. “Wrong? Not unless mine eyes deceive me.”

Phoebe was turning again more slowly. “I thought maybe my petticoat was showing.”

“Not a sign of it.”

“But, Uncle Bob——!”

“Yes? What?”

“Get right behind me,—straight behind.”

“Here I am.”

“Oh, Uncle Bob, is there a hole in my stocking?”

He looked—now at one slim leg, now at the other. “There certainly is not.”

She got down, her eyes solemn. “Uncle Bob,” she confided, “I don’t know what to make of it. But all today, at school, the girls have stared, and stared, and—and whispered. I was sure something was wrong—with my hair, or my dress. And they were too—too polite to tell.”

“Polite, you call ’em!” And Phoebe noted how Uncle Bob’s chest rose, so that the front edges of his coat drew apart. Just over the top of his collar, too, his neck grew scarlet. “Staring and whispering! The ill-bred chits!”

But Phoebe was not angry—only puzzled. “It’s—it’s another mystery,” she said, almost under her breath.

“Say!”—her Uncle came to stand beside her, and he, too, lowered his voice—“do you know, I don’t believe I like that Simpson School! Suppose we just cut it out?”

The light in her eager eyes answered him. She had been wondering just how she could go on at Miss Simpson’s, with the girls acting so queerly, and not asking her to walk home with them, or sit with them under the school arbor during the morning study-hour. “You mean, Uncle Bob,” she breathed incredulously, “that I won’t have to go to Miss Simpson’s any more?”

“Well, something on that order.” The Judge smiled a wide, tooth-revealing smile.

But his news was too good to be true. “Has Daddy said so?” she wanted to know.

“He hasn’t, but I’ve a strong idea that he will.”

“Oh, I’m glad!” She took a deep breath. “Because, Uncle Bob, I’ve felt—well, so queer at school for several days. You know—uneasy.”

He nodded. “I know.” And more confidentially, leaning down to say it, “I’ve heard of other girls—oh, extra fine girls—who felt exactly like you do about Miss Simpson’s.”

But Phoebe was scarcely listening. A new plan—a wonderful, heart-stirring plan—had come to her, following on the thought that now her days were again free. “Oh, Uncle Bob,” she began, “if I don’t have to go to school again, maybe Daddy will let me go West! To Mother!”

Her uncle backed a step; his look lifted to the wall behind her. He slapped one plump hand with the other, pursing his lips thoughtfully. “Mm—er—yes,” he observed; then turning away, “I’m afraid we haven’t made things very lively for you here.”

“It isn’t that,” she protested. “I’ve had Daddy. And I love to be here with all of you. You’re all so nice to each other—never cross. But—but, Uncle Bob, I’m beginning to—to miss my Mother.” Her look beseeched him.

He sat down, holding out his hands to her, and she came to stand at his knee. “If you have to stay a little longer with us,” he said gently, “you can be out-doors every one of these sunny Spring days, and you can plant a garden. And when it rains, well, this isn’t a little, tucked-up New York apartment—this big house.”

She looked around, nodding. “It’s terribly big,” she declared. “So many rooms, and so far up to the ceiling. At first I almost got lost—you remember? To go anywhere, you have to travel so much.”

Uncle Bob laughed, and drew her to him. “You blessed!” he said. “Of course it’s big. Why, there’s room enough here to swing a cat.”

“Yes,” agreed Phoebe, “but I don’t want to swing a cat.”

“I mean”—Uncle Bob was shaking precisely like the more substantial portion of a floating-island pudding!—“that you can stretch yourself.”

“No.” Phoebe shook her head with decision. “No, Uncle John doesn’t like me to stretch. He says, ‘Ladies don’t do it’.”

“Oh, you funny little tyke!” cried Uncle Bob. “Can’t you run, and romp, and play?”

“In here?” she asked, swinging an arm.

“Yes, dumpling!”

“No,” answered Phoebe, as certain as before. “I’d bother Uncle John when he’s writing a sermon. So Saturdays, when I’m here, I just stand at a window if I can’t play out in the yard. I just stand and look out. But I can’t see much—even upstairs. Because this house is so awfully low down, next the ground.”

“Low down!” ejaculated her uncle, amazed.

“Yes. In New York, our apartment was ’way high up in the building, and we could look over the tops of houses to the River. And the other direction, oh, there was a wonderful moving-picture theatre, and——” She stopped, suddenly remembering.

But her Uncle Bob smiled at her kindly. “And what about that theatre?”

“I went lots of evenings, before Mother was so sick—just Mother and I went, or Sally took me. My! but I love the movies!” Then, fearing he might misjudge her, “I loved the nights we stayed at home, too. They were so cosy. Daddy would be gone, or busy, or just downtown. So Mother would sit at the window in her room, in a big chair, and I’d sit on her knees. Of course, my legs are long, and they hung over. So we just put a stool close by to hold up my feet, and then—then Mother would sing to me.” Her lips trembled.

“Darling!” said Uncle Bob, tenderly. There were tears in her eyes, but she was smiling through them bravely at this uncle who seemed always to understand her. Whereupon he smiled, too, and kissed her. “Maybe Grandma can hold you like that, in a big chair, sometimes.”

“I’m afraid she isn’t strong enough,” answered Phoebe. “And then, maybe she wouldn’t know just how to sing.”

“I see.” He pondered the problem a moment. “Well, of course, I can hold you. But about the singing—just what was it that Mother sang?”

“Oh, she just made it up as she went along—to suit the occasion.”

He put his arms about her then, and held her close. And there was a long pause.

Her eyes were brimming. And presently, with a long sigh, she spoke again: “Oh, how I like my mother to hold me!”—it was scarcely more than a whisper. “I like her arms, and the place just here on her shoulder.” The coat under her cheek was checked. She touched a black square with a finger. “And she uses perfumery on her hair. Oh, Uncle Bob, I love her hair! I—I love my mother!”

She wept then, without restraint. And the Judge, awkwardly, and puffing not a little with the effort, gathered her up in his arms and held her, whispering to her, straining the little figure to his breast.

“I can’t say anything to Daddy,” she sobbed. “Oh, Uncle Bob! Uncle Bob!”

He patted her shoulder. He laid a big cheek against her wet, baby-soft face. He rocked her gently, yearning over her with all the fatherliness of his big heart. How many times, as Grandma told her, had tearful little ones cried out to him where he sat in his lofty chambers at the Court House! How often had his tender sympathy wrapped them about like a robe—the mistreated, the lonely, the children that lacked love! But here, calling upon him for help in her suffering, was one dearer than all others, of his own blood. And what would he do to help her?

“When can I see Mother?” she asked. “When?”

“Give us all time,” he pleaded. “I know how it is, but try to bear it—try to wait. It’ll all come out right somehow—it’s got to, Phoebe. Oh, it’s got to!”

She felt that he understood, that he grieved with her, that her heartache was his own.