.
if she would look her through and through.
Phoebe started and dropped the spoon back into the mush where it sank with a sigh and a mutter. There was something enlightening in Emmeline's tone. Phoebe saw it at once. The family had heen aware of Hiram's intention!
Her eyes flashed one spark of anger, then she turned abruptly back to the kettle and went on with her work.
" Yes," she answered, inscrutably. Emmeline was always irritated at the difficulty with which she found out anything from Phoebe.
" Well, I didn't hear you come in," she complained, " you must have been out a long time."
Wary Emmeline. She had touched the spring that opened the secret.
" I wasn't out five minutes in all."
" You don't say!" said Emmeline, in surprise. " Why, I thought you said Hiram found you."
Phoebe put the cover on the dish of mush and set it on the table before she deigned any reply. Then she came over and stood beside Emmeline calmly and spoke in a cool, clear voice:
" Emmeline, did Hiram Green tell you what he was coming out to the orchard for last night ? "
" For mercy's sake, Phoebe, don't put on heroics! I'm not blind, I hope. One couldn't very well help seeing, what Hiram Green wants. Did you think you were the only member of the family with eyes ? "
When Emmeline looked up from cutting the bread at the conclusion of these remarks she was startled to see Phoebe's face. It was white as marble even to the lips, and her great beautiful eyes shone like two luminous stars.
" Emmeline, did you and Albert know what Hiram Green wanted of me, and did you let him come out there to find me after you knew that ? "
Her voice was very calm and low. It reminded one of some coolly flowing river, with unknown depths in its shadowed bosom. Emmeline was awed by it for a moment. She laid down the bread-knife and stood and stared. Phoebe was small and dainter, with features cut like a cameo, and a singularly sweet, childlike expression when, her face was in repose. That she was rarely beautiful her family had never noticed, though sometimes Albert liked to watch her as she sat sewing. She seemed to him a pleasant thing to have around, like a bright posy-bed. Emmeline thought her too frail-looking and pale. But for the moment the delicate girl was transformed. Her face shone with a light of righteous anger, and her eyes blazed dark with feeling. Two spots of lovely rose-color glowed upon her cheeks. The morning sun had just reached the south window by the table where Emmeline had been cutting bread, and it laid its golden fingers over the bright waves of brown hair in a halo round her head, as if the sun would sanction her righteous wrath. She looked like some beautiful, injured saint, and before the intensity of the maiden's emotion her sister-in-law fairly quailed.
" Fer the land! Phoebe! Now don't! " said Emmeline, in a tone conciliatory. " What if I did know ? Was that any sin? You must remember your brother and I are looking to your best interests, and Hiram is considered a real fine ketch." '
Slowly Phoebe's righteous wrath sank again into her heart. The fire went out of her eyes, and in its place came ice that seemed to pierce Emmeline till she felt like shrinking away.
" You're the queerest girl I ever saw," said Emmeline, fretfully restive under Phoebe's gaze. " What's the matter with you ? Didn't you ever expect to have any beaux ? "
Phoebe shivered as if a north blast had struck her at that last word.
" Did you mean, then," she said, coldly, in a voice that sounded as if it came from very far away, " that you thought that I would ever be willing to marry Hiram Green? Did you and Albert talk it over and think that ? "
Emmeline found it hard to answer the question, put in a tone which seemed to imply a great offence. Phoebe lived on a plane far too high for Emmeline to even try to understand without a great effort. The effort wearied her.
" Well, I should like to know why you shouldn't marry him! " declared Emmeline, impatiently. " There's plenty of girls would be glad to get him." Emmeline glanced hurriedly out of the window and saw Albert and the hired man coming to breakfast. It was time the children were down. Alma came lagging into the kitchen, asking to have her frock buttoned, and Johnny and Bertie were heard scuffling in the rooms overhead. There was no time for further conversation. Emmeline was about to dismiss the subject, but Phoebe stepped between her and the little girl and laid her small supple hands on Emmeline's stout rounding shoulders, looking her straight in the eyes.
" Emmeline, how can you possibly be so unkind as to think such a thing for me when you know how Annie suffered?"
" Oh, fiddlesticks! " said Emmeline, shoving the girl away roughly. " Annie was a milk-and-water baby who wanted to be coddled. The right woman could wind Hiram Green around her little finger. You're a little fool if you think about that. Annie's dead and gone and you've no need to trouble with her. Come, put the things on the table while I button Alma. I'm sure there never was as silly a girl as .you are in this world. Anybody'd think you was a princess in disguise instead of a poor orphan dependent on her brother, and he only a half at that!"
With which parting shot Emmeline slammed the kitchen door and called to the two little boys in a loud, harsh tone.
The crimson rose in Phoebe's cheeks till it covered face and neck in a sweet, shamed tide and threatened to bring the tears into her eyes. Her very soul seemed wrenched from its moorings at the cruel reminder of her dependence upon the bounty of this coarse woman and her husband. Phoebe felt as if she must leave the house at once never to return, only there was no place—no place in this wide world for her to go.
Then Albert appeared in the kitchen door with the hired man behind him, and the sense of her duty made her turn to work, that old, blessed refuge for those who are turned out of their bits of Edens for a time. She hurried to take up the breakfast, while the two men washed their faces at the pump and dried them on the long roller-towel that hung from the inside of the door.
" Hello, Phoebe," called Albert, as he turned to surrender his place at the comb and the looking-glass. " I say, Phoebe, you're looking like a rose this morning. What makes your cheeks so red ? Anybody been kissing you this early ? "
This pleasantry was intended as a joke. Albert had never said anything of the sort to her before. She felt instinctively that Emmeline had been putting ideas about her and Hiram into his head. It almost brought the tears to have Albert speak in this way. He was so uniformly kind to her and treated her as if she were still almost a child. She hated jokes of this sort, and it was all the worse because of the presence of Alma and the hired man. Alma grinned knowingly, and went over where she could look into Phoebe’s face. Henry Williams, with the freedom born of his own social equality—he being the son of a neighboring farmer who had hired himself out for the season as there were more brothers at home than were needed—turned and stared admiringly at Phoebe.
" Say, Phoebe," put in Henry, " you do look real pretty this morning, now if I do say it. I never noticed before how handsome your eyes were. What's that you said about kissing, Albert? I wouldn't mind taking the job, if it's going. How about it, Phoebe ? "
Pleasantry of this sort was common in the neighborhood, but Phoebe had never joined in it, and she had always looked upon it as unrefined, and a form of amusement that her mother would not have liked. Now when it was directed toward her, and she realized that it trifled with the most sacred and personal relations of life, it filled her with horror.
" Please don't, Albert!" she said, with trembling lips in a low voice. " Don't! I don't like it." And Alma saw with wonder, and gloated over the fact, that there were tears in Aunt Phoebe's eyes. That would be something to remember and tell. Aunt Phoebe usually kept her emotions to herself with the door shut too tight for Alma to peep in.
" Not ? " said Albert, perplexed. " Well, course I won't if you don't like it. I was only telling you how bright and pretty you looked and making you know how nice it was to have you around. Sit down, child, and let's have breakfast. Where's your mother, Alma?"
Emmeline entered with a flushed face, and a couple of cowed and dejected small boys held firmly by the shoulders.
Somewhat