"To be sure I shall have a great deal more to attend to now, but I suppose Phebe can help me more than she has done. She is a great stout girl and might make herself useful if she had a mind to do so. She ought to be made to understand that she is dependent and should do something to earn her own living! I cannot afford to keep her for nothing!"
"This home is yours, I am fully aware, Fanny," replied Mr. Evans with some warmth; "and if you wish it I will take my children out of it and find them another." Fanny burst into tears and arose to leave the room.
"I will endeavor to be a sister to both of them," she stopped to say in a subdued tone, and the father was alone.
"I must believe her," he thought at last; "she cannot be cruel to her poor brother at least!" So in a few days, before the early flowers decked the garden walks, the father and protector was away upon the waves, and the home was once more desolate!
Ah, there are sad times in life when even hope seems arrayed in the sombre habiliments of mourning. The future grows darker and darker as we gaze upon it; there is no light because we are powerless to penetrate the clouds that are hanging over us. Who shall lead us out? Timid and shrinking we stretch our trembling hands out into the gloom when to the surprise of the fainting heart we feel the gentle grasp of love, while the way brightens and the faltering feet gain a firmer tread as they step forward where the shadows are broken and the rugged road appears in full view.
If Phebe had been a strange child when she entered the cottage, the intimate companionship of the thoughtful studious cripple had not made her less so. The events of each passing day had imparted their impress upon her susceptible nature. Her mind had been an open chalice into which her foster-brother had poured the hoarded wealth of his own; and she was learned beyond her years. The little "dumpy figure" was now tall and well-proportioned for her age, and Willie looked upon her with pride and admiration. More than this, her heart with its far-reaching mysteries had been guided close to the cross and around it the tendrils of its unsolved longings twined themselves. Her dreams of the unreal were no less, but her realizations of the sterner demands of life were more. Willie had early learned to tell the pitying Redeemer his tales of sorrow and deprivations, and where he found comfort and sympathy the restless Phebe had been led. How kind in the potter to prepare the clay for his grand purposes of use, although sometimes with a rough as well as masterly hand! And how can its powers be manifested without the "fashioning process" or its durability secured in the absence of the "mouldings" and the fire? The master understood his work and Phebe lay passively in his hands.
Down by the lake where the wild honeysuckle yielded up its luscious fruits to the children when the blossoms had disappeared, was a little arbor where tender fingers had woven the slender branches of the whispering pines together, and in this sweet bower Willie and his companion sat every day when the snow and frosts were gone and talked of the absent mother, wishing that the gentle spirit might be ever near to check the turbulent winds and smooth down the angry waves.
CHAPTER VI.
"CRAZY DIMIS" AND THE TWILIGHT SCENE
"What are you thinking about, Phebe? I have watched you ever since we turned the corner down by the big pine tree, and not a muscle of your face has moved, as far as I can discover. Tell Willie, won't you?"
Phebe, thus addressed, drew herself up with a long sigh, and passing her hand mechanically across her forehead, replied, while her eyes remained seemingly fixed on some far-off object:
"I do not know. See how the sunshine falls in golden patches on the pond yonder, like what you read about this morning. Willie, I don't want to be Phebe– nothing but little Phebe. I – I want to fly! See that bird going up, up. He will get away beyond the clouds – far above the top of the mountain yonder. I want to be like him, or something, I do not know what; don't you, Willie?"
"Yes; though ambitions are not for one like me; but you will be something besides 'little Phebe,' by and by. I see it in your beaming face and deep dark eyes; while I must always be 'poor little Willie,' nothing else. I have for a long time been watching you, and reading my destiny of loneliness and utter dreariness in your strange, mysterious words, and knew that they all came from a heart that would never be satisfied with the plodding life where I must remain. Two paths are open to us, and I can even now see that they must branch off from each other. O Phebe, hard as it is to be as I am, I would not hold you, little bird, from your upward flight; but just think what a terrible night my future will be without my little Phebe! Then I shall have no sweet sister to comfort and cheer me when out of patience with myself and cross because of my infirmity. And I shall not be your own Willie as now. It is wrong, I know, to feel so, but I cannot help it! It is bitter enough to know that I must lose you, but your love, little sister, how can I live without that?"
Phebe was taking a seat beside him, where he had made room for her while speaking. And, without answering his moan of anguish, she clasped her arms about his neck and kissed his pale face over and over again.
"Love you?" she exclaimed. "I shall always love you. I do not believe at all in those paths you have been telling about. What would I want to go off in another for if you could not follow me? No, no, Willie, I would not fly away up into the clouds without you; or be something that I so long to be, for I always want to be your little Phebe – nothing else. I was only thinking while I sat here and saw Rover draw you out of sight, how I wanted to go off somewhere! and then I thought of the waves– how they used to talk to me – and just then, Willie, the patches fell down on the water, and a strange feeling came over me; but it is gone now, and I want to stay with you. Did not Mother give you to me and say that I must never leave you? You are my own Willie, just as you always will be." And with one more kiss she took the reins from his hand and gave the order for Rover to proceed.
"Ha! ha! ha!" came to them from the thicket near where they had been sitting, and at the same time two large, wild eyes peered through the opening a pair of thin bony hands had made in the thick foliage.
"It is Crazy Dimis; don't be afraid," said Willie, as his companion gave a startled look; "she has been at our house many times when I was a little boy, and she will not hurt any one. She has escaped from her imprisonment as she used often to do, but they know she is harmless."
The figure of a woman, tall and straight, but very plainly clad, now stood before them.
"It is wonderful sweet to love, isn't it silly children? Kisses are like honey – good on the lips; but they kill sometimes. Ha! ha! Waste them! throw them away, silly children. They'll be bitter by and by. It's coming – coming! Don't I know it? Kisses are like candy, mustn't eat too much, little fools! Beware! the roses will fade and the thorns are sharp! They'll prick you! Don't I know? Flowers are not for everybody – plant cabbage! Ha! ha! Crazy, am I? He said so, too. But it was the adder's tongue that poisoned my life. His love —his kiss. Beware! Remember I tell you, beware!" and with a bound she darted again into the thicket and was lost from sight.
Willie had taken the reins from his companion as this unwelcome apparition appeared, but as she vanished Phebe exclaimed:
"What a horrid creature! What makes her talk so strangely? Who is the one she spoke of? Do you know her?"
"Mother said she was once the brightest, prettiest girl anywhere around; but her husband disappointed her, and was unkind. It was this, I believe, that made her what she is. There used to be much good sense in what she said – shrewd, cunning, and not wholly gibberish. But let us hurry home; Fanny may want you."
"Flowers are not for everybody. Did she mean me, Willie? Her words make me shiver!"
While yet speaking they came round to the kitchen door, where Fanny met them. Something had evidently gone wrong, for she was flushed, and her step was quick and prophetic. She had many cares, and her temper had not grown sweeter by their constant pressure.
"You might as well have staid out the rest of the morning, and let me do everything," was her first exclamation. She was hurrying past, and did not, therefore, wait for a reply.
"Never