Phoebe 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 the assassin, the cup of the poisoner, the burglar’s automatic, the soldier’s bayonet. Comfortably seated beside her mother or Sally, before a great curtain that sprang into life as the theatre darkened, she had even watched the waging of the Great War!

So it was easy for her, with her imagination thus trained and stimulated, to call up—once she knew of her mother’s death—such pictures in her mind as could augment to the point of torture the natural grief of her fourteen years. She saw her mother die alone, weeping out her last moments; or she saw a nurse and a priest watching beside that distant bed. She saw other things that made her shudder, and cover her eyes, or cling to whomever was nearest for the comfort and sympathy that could drive away such terrible visions.

That first week was a week of poignant suffering. She was not left alone one moment. By day she was passed, as it were, from hand to hand in the household, taking her turn with Sophie in the kitchen of a morning, spending the early afternoon with Grandma, the later hours with Uncle Bob. By night she slept only if someone sat beside her, in her high, big room, and held her hand. Sometimes Grandma stayed the first half of the night, or Sophie. After midnight it was Uncle Bob who took his place at her pillow.

There was something particularly sweet and comforting to Phoebe about that companionship through the night. If she started from troubled dreams, and cried out, always there was an answering voice, low and loving, to soothe her; and there were tender kisses, and in the dark a hand would caress her cheek or smooth her hair. Then she would murmur a little, brokenly, and sleep again.

She found that a bereavement was not without its compensations! For one thing, the local newspapers had short, but kind, notices of the death, in the Far West, of Mrs. James Blair. And there were references to “the little daughter, Phoebe, now residing with her grandmother, Mrs. John G. Blair”. Never before had Phoebe seen her own name in print. She liked the notices. They made her cry, but they also interested her strangely.

Then there were the black bands which Grandma sewed on the left sleeves of Phoebe’s Sunday and second-best dresses. Uncle John had opposed the bands strongly, and in Phoebe’s presence. He did not approve of the wearing of mourning by children. But Uncle Bob thought otherwise. “It’s the least we can do,” he said firmly. Grandma agreed. Sophie thought a black band was “awful swell”. And as for Phoebe, a band on her sleeve seemed to set her apart, somehow, to single her out particularly. And she liked to wear it. She was almost proud of it!

There were other compensations. People sent her flowers, and candy, and Miss Simpson wrote her a note of condolence—a most polite note, which Phoebe tore up! And there was another letter, a “Round Robin” from eight of the girls at Miss Simpson’s. Phoebe was so happy when it came—happy in a triumphant way. This letter she also destroyed. And she refused to answer either.

“They didn’t like me when my mother was alive,” she declared. “And they said things about Mother.”

“Good for you, old dumpling!” commended Uncle Bob. “There’s spunk for you!”

“Don’t encourage Phoebe in that sort of thing!” begged Uncle John.

“They’re a lot of hypocrites,” declared his brother. “And this youngster’s got sense enough to know it. Why didn’t they show some sympathy over the other thing?”

“True,” agreed Uncle John. “For that was worse than death.”

“Exactly. But now, they begin their writing. They were thinking of themselves when they—when I took Phoebe away from there. And now whom are they thinking about?—that Simpson woman’s pocket-book! Confound them!”

Phoebe gave some reflection to that short passage between her uncles. What was worse than death? She knew: scandal!

But the most gratifying thing that happened to her was a surprise. One night she wakened to find her hand in the clasp of a hand smaller than Uncle Bob’s, softer than Sophie’s, firmer than Grandma’s. And without being told who it was, she instantly guessed. “Miss Ruth!” she whispered.

“It is Miss Ruth, Phoebe,” came the whisper back. Velvet lips touched her forehead and her hair. An arm went round her, to pat the slender shoulders and tuck in the covers.

“I love you,” sighed Phoebe, contented, and slept again.

After that Miss Ruth continued to come. Often in the darkness, if Phoebe was wakeful, Miss Ruth would tell her stories—wonderful stories, about princesses and knights, goblins and dwarfs and fairies. These were all new to Phoebe, who knew best the more modern stories of the films.

“Why didn’t you ever come to see us before?” Phoebe wanted to know.

“You like me, don’t you, dear?” Miss Ruth returned happily. It was early morning, and Phoebe had just wakened. Already the room was lightening with the dawn. Miss Ruth leaned down and cupped Phoebe’s cheek in the palm of a hand. “And you’re like your father,” she added with a tender smile.

Soon there came a time when Phoebe slept through the nights without waking, when watchers were no longer needed beside her bed. She did not understand how it was, but she had come to feel two things: First, it did not seem true that her mother was dead, and having had no letters from her mother since leaving New York, there was not even the cutting off of messages to bring home to Phoebe her loss; second, her mother’s death settled finally a question that had vexed Phoebe sorely, the troublesome question of what was going to happen once the divorce was granted. Now Phoebe knew. She had only Daddy! She would go with Daddy.

And as this fact was borne in upon her, she remembered the matter that Manila had broached. She recollected, too, the decision she herself had made—to thwart. “And I must get at it,” she declared. “Because now, with Mother gone it’s likely——”

She wrote her father. From Nevada he had gone on directly southward, and his address was such a very strange one that Phoebe had her Uncle Bob direct her envelope. But no one saw what she wrote. Though what she wrote was not what she had fully intended to say. At first she had determined to tell him frankly that she could never, never bear to have a step-mother, who would hate her, and beat her with part of a tug, and turn her father against her. She ended by sending him four cheerful, newsy pages; only at the end did she allow herself to touch remotely upon what was uppermost in her mind.

“Darling Daddy,” ran her final paragraph, “you don’t like anybody but me, do you? Oh, dear Daddy, say you don’t.”

When the letter was gone (she posted it herself), she realized that now, with Mother dead, it would be harder than ever for her if her father were to marry a second time. She saw that she must have counsel from someone. And who knew more about the whole thing than Manila? She determined to see Manila.

During those first weeks following Phoebe’s arrival from New York, how anxious the family had been that she should meet and talk to no one. But now, as during Phoebe’s attendance at Miss Simpson’s, her uncles and her grandmother were more than anxious that she should have company—and plenty of it, so that her thoughts would not dwell too much upon her loss.

“Aren’t there some little girls that you’d like to have come?” Grandma often wanted to know.

This gave Phoebe her opportunity! “I’d like to see Manila,” she announced one day.

And so it came about that Manila paid Phoebe a second visit, and the two went out to the summerhouse, taking along Phoebe’s old doll, and Phoebe told Manila all about Mother, and wept, her head on Manila’s knee, and confessed her fears and her intention to thwart.

Manila was practical. “Well, if he comes back with a Peru wife you can’t do nothin’,” she argued. (So monosyllabic as a rule, Manila, when it came to the subject of step-mothers, could be even talkative!) “But if he comes back alone, why——”

“What?” asked Phoebe. “Because if he went to the movies, he’d know step-mothers are bad. But he doesn’t. And I can’t think how to show him. I just can’t.”

“I know.” Manila nodded solemnly.

“How?”

“We’ll show him mine.”

“Oh, Manila!” Phoebe was overjoyed. “That’s a wonderful plan! Daddy’ll see her, and he’ll hate her. But how can you get him to see her?”

Manila laughed. “Easy!” she declared. “I’ll fix it so’s she’ll foller me here.”

Phoebe looked at her with awe—and respect. “Suppose she was to try to kill you!” she ventured. “Step-mothers are awful bad in the movies.”

“Let her kill me,” answered Manila, philosophically. “Then the Judge’d have her hung.”

“Say, what does your step-mother look like?” Phoebe wanted to know.

Manila thought. “She’s like a rat most,” she concluded finally. “She’s slim, and she goes around so’s you don’t hear her comin’. She has black eyes, and slick hair, and a sniffy nose.”

“Ugh!” breathed Phoebe. (After that the imaginary step-mother that lurked in the big Blair house whenever the light was dim, took on a ratlike personality—slenderness, stealthiness, small black eyes and sniffy nose.)

Phoebe visualized the lady under discussion. “The Hanging of the Rat-Woman,” she mused. “That would be a wonderful title.”

Manila thought so too.

“I wish I was a big cat,” she confided, “I’d wait behind somethin’, and when Mrs. Botts come by, I’d jump at her, and break her back.” Manila’s face was pale with the thrill of it, and with hate. Phoebe regarded her more respectfully than ever.

“I run away today,” went on Manila. “I don’t never ask Mrs. Botts what I can do, and Paw was downtown. Miss Ruth telephoned, and when she said you wanted to see me, over I come.”

“But when you get home—?” It was Phoebe’s time to go white.

Manila’s eyes narrowed. “If she licks me, I’ll tell the Judge on her,” she threatened. “And he’ll have her in Court, and shame her like he did once before. And a lickin’ don’t hurt long.”

Manila waited about that afternoon long past the time when, in the natural order of events, Phoebe thought her visitor should have gone. For suppertime approached, and yet Manila lingered.

“Are you afraid?” Phoebe wanted to know.

“Uh-uh,” denied Manila. “I’m waitin’ till I’m sure Paw is back. If Mrs. Botts licks me I want him to see. Then I yell hard, and the folks on either side call Paw up on the phone.”

When Manila went, Phoebe experienced real terror. At the supper-table, not being able to eat, she confided her fears to Grandma and her uncles. Whereupon Uncle Bob promptly called the Botts home up on the telephone. Mrs. Botts answered. She seemed as quiet as possible, he said.

“But she’ll bide her time, the vixen!” he added. “And Manila oughtn’t to leave home like that. I have my hands full enough as it is.”

Phoebe said nothing. What if he knew that she and Manila had planned, when the time should be ripe, so to tantalize Mrs. Botts that the latter would invade the Blair house, there to serve to Phoebe’s father as a horrible example of a real step-mother?

“Just let the mean old thing keep away from here,” said Phoebe, by way of tactfully turning Uncle Bob from even a suspicion of that plan.

“My dear niece!” chided Uncle John.