“May I go right in?—Phoebe! Oh, Phoebe, I’m so frightened! Darling,—why—why, you’re much better!”

Miss Ruth had entered with a rush, to find Phoebe just emerging from the clothes-closet. Miss Ruth was breathless, and a little pale. Now she dropped the hat she was carrying, and knelt on the carpet, and caught Phoebe to her.

“Yes, I’m—I’m much better,” declared Phoebe. She bent to kiss Miss Ruth’s hair.

Miss Ruth hid her face against Phoebe’s breast. “I’m so glad! So glad!” she said tenderly.

“You see,” admitted Phoebe, “I wasn’t truly sick.”

Miss Ruth looked up. “But the Judge said——”

Phoebe nodded. “I know. Only I—I’ve just been pretending.”

“Phoebe!” laughed Miss Ruth. Then, suddenly grave, “Oh, you don’t know how it hurt to have you missing that day! Oh, Phoebe, I’m so happy that you’re just pretending!” Then, catching sight of the pumps, and, next, of the blue smock, “Why, Phoebe, this dress! Something’s happened!”

“No,” declared Phoebe, “not yet. But, Miss Ruth, get ready! Something’s going to happen!”

“To me?” Miss Ruth sat back. Her hair was rumpled. She looked very young and girlish.

“To both of us,” promised Phoebe, solemnly.

“Ho—ho!”

“It’s something awfully important,” cautioned Phoebe.

“Dear me! Well, I think I’d better get up, then, and be prepared.” Miss Ruth seated herself on the sofa. “Now! I’m all curiosity. Is there anything I’m supposed to do?”

Phoebe thought a moment. “Ye-e-es. Let me see.—I think you can lean back.”

“Ah!” Miss Ruth made herself comfortable against a cushion. “I like this, because I ran all the way over.” She smiled at Phoebe provokingly. “And now what?”

“Now try to look just as pretty as you can.”

Miss Ruth laughed. “Oh, I’ll do my best,” she declared.

Phoebe shook her head at her. “I’m not joking,” she said earnestly. “You know you are pretty.”

“Oh, give me a kiss!” cried Miss Ruth, laughing again, and leaning to catch at the blue smock.

But Phoebe backed away. “No,” she said firmly, “it’s too soon——”

“Too soon?” Miss Ruth was puzzled.

“Yes. You see this has to be done in a certain way.”

“Oh.”

“Right now, a kiss would be turning everything upside down.” Phoebe was very much in earnest.

“Well! Well!” Miss Ruth tried to look properly impressed.

“Next,” continued Phoebe, “I come close to you, and I look at you, showing that I love you.”

“Phoebe!” Now Miss Ruth caught at Phoebe’s hand.

“No! Holding hands also comes later.”

“I see.” Miss Ruth leaned back once more.

“Of course, you’re surprised that I love you——”

“But I’m not!”

“You will be when you hear it all,” threatened Phoebe. “And right now you ought to drop your eyes.”

Miss Ruth looked down. It was as if she understood, suddenly, what it all meant. Her face grew grave, and softly pink.

“That’s better,” said Phoebe, admiringly. “So this is when I reach and take your hand.” She took Miss Ruth’s hand gently, and held it between both her own. Once, in a charming picture, she had seen Mr. Henry Walthall do precisely that. “Miss Shepard,” she went on, “the first day I met you, I liked you very much. That was before—Mother—went away. I was unhappy, and you were so good to me. You knew how I felt.”

“Ah, my dear,” breathed Miss Ruth. She leaned forward, holding out the other hand.

“Wait!” pleaded Phoebe. “Because I’m not done. Miss Ruth, day after day, for all these months, I’ve liked you more and more. Now I know that I love you better than I do my relations.”

“Phoebe, no!” Miss Ruth stared in amazement.

“Yes! Oh, not more than Daddy, because he’s not a relation. But, Miss Ruth, I love you as much as I do Daddy.”

“And I love you,” said Miss Ruth.

Phoebe dropped to the carpet at Miss Ruth’s knee. “How much?” she asked. “Oh, think hard before you say!”

“I hardly know how much.” She took Phoebe’s face between her hands. “But very, very much.”

“Do you love me so much that you’d do something wonderful for me?—something that would make me the happiest girl in the whole world?”

“What, darling?” Miss Ruth bent close. Her look searched Phoebe’s face.

Phoebe had meant to go on just as Mr. Henry Walthall would have gone on—“Miss Shepard, dear little woman, say Yes to me,” and then add, “Be my mother, and Daddy’s loving wife!” But she forgot how Mr. Walthall had knelt and looked, forgot to be solemn and poised; and completely out of her thoughts went all that she had planned to say. Instead she threw her arms about Miss Ruth, and clung to her wildly. “Oh, you must come with us!” she cried. “We can’t live without you. Daddy adores you! And I do! Oh, Miss Ruth, I think I’ve inherited it!”

Miss Ruth gently freed herself from the hold of the young arms. Then without speaking, she drew back from Phoebe. “My dear,” she said quietly, “who told you to say that?”

Phoebe hesitated. The truth was that Sophie had put the idea of inheritance into Phoebe’s head. Once Phoebe had protested to Sophie her great affection for Miss Ruth. Whereupon Sophie, with a wise nod, had said, “Sure y’ do. You inherited it.”

But the truth would not do! Uncle Bob had told Phoebe what to say, and she must obey him. It was a fib, and it was not a little one. But it would do much—for herself; for Miss Ruth; last, and most important, for the dear father, who, long ago, had put aside his own dreams for the sake of the elder brother he loved.

Phoebe looked straight into Miss Ruth’s eyes. “Who?” she repeated. “Why, it was Daddy.”

Miss Ruth caught her close, held her for a long moment during which neither moved nor spoke, then pushed back her hair and kissed her. “Phoebe, dear,” she said, “I want to tell you something. From the moment I first saw you I loved you, just as you loved me,—oh, so tenderly! I loved you because you were you; and then, I loved you for another reason——”

“What?” whispered Phoebe.

“Can you keep a secret?”

Phoebe remembered Uncle Bob. She nodded. “I’m keeping several,” she declared.

“Phoebe,” said Miss Ruth, speaking very low, “I loved you because you were his little daughter.”

“Daddy’s?”

“Your dear, fine Daddy’s!”

“Then you’ll be my mother! Oh, Miss Ruth, say that you will! Say you’ll come! Say Yes! Say Yes!”

“My little daughter!” faltered Miss Ruth. She laid her cheek against Phoebe’s hair.

It was then that Phoebe heard a heavy step—heard the door close, and the step come toward them. “Ruth!” said a voice. (Uncle Bob had sent some one else!)

Miss Ruth rose, lifting Phoebe with her. The two stood, arms about each other, waiting. But Miss Ruth’s look was lowered. Only Phoebe silently beseeched her father.

“Dearest,” he said presently,—and he was not speaking to Phoebe; “I suppose there’s no use fighting against it.”

“No,” she answered. “No use.”

“Because he wants it,” went on Phoebe’s father; “dear old Bob. He’s the one that’s fixed this up?” He came a step nearer.

Miss Ruth looked up then. “My heart was breaking,” she whispered, “at the thought of having you go.”

“Ruth!” He held out his arms to her, and she went to him.

Phoebe scarcely knew what to do. She had never seen just this situation on the screen. But instinct told her that it would be best, perhaps, to let Daddy and Miss Ruth have this moment to themselves. So Phoebe turned aside, and looked out of a window at the branches that were close and the clouds that were far. And valiantly she tried to forget the two behind her, and hear only the birds.

“I want you, Ruth,” her father was saying. “Oh, I’ve always wanted you!”

“You do love me!” answered Miss Ruth. “Dear Jim!”

“Tweet-tweet!” added a sparrow outside. He had his head on one side, precisely, Phoebe thought, as if he were trying to look in. Oh, the prying little thing! Phoebe swung one hand at him.

“And Phoebe?” It was Miss Ruth, turning to speak, so softly.

“Yes, Mother?” said Phoebe.