PHŒBE BY ELEANOR GATES AUTHOR OF THE POOR LITTLE RICH GIRL, APRON STRINGS, THE PRAIRIE GIRL, ETC. [Illustration] NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS COPYRIGHT 1919, BY ELEANOR GATES _All rights reserved_ _Printed in U. S. A._ AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED TO THAT LITTLE GIRL WHOSE STORY IT IS ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PHŒBE CHAPTER I “_Dear little daughter_,” ran the telegram, “_when you get this, fill a suit-case with a few things that you’ll need most, and leave with Daddy for Grandma’s.—Mother._” The train was already moving. Phœbe, with all the solemnity of her fourteen years, puckered her brows over the slip of yellow paper, winked her long lashes at it reflectively, and pursed a troubled mouth. How strange that dear Mother should leave the New York apartment in mid-morning, with the usual gay kiss that meant short separation; and then in that same hour should send this message—this command—which was to start Phœbe away from the great city, where all of her short life had been spent, toward that smaller city where lived the Grandmother she had never seen, and the two Uncles—one a Judge and the other a clergyman—who, though her father’s own brothers, were yet strangers to their only niece! Somehow, without having to be told, Phœbe had always understood that Mother did not like Grandma, or the Uncles, judicial and ecclesiastic. Then why was Mother, without a real farewell, and without motherly preparation in the matter of dress, and with no explanations, sending Phœbe to those paternal relations? It was all very strange! It was mysterious, like—yes, like stories Phœbe had seen in moving-pictures. Out of the gloom and clangor of the great station, the train was now fast winding its way, past lights that burned, Phœbe thought, like those in the big basement of the apartment house where she had lived so long. Now the coach was leaving one pair of rails for a new pair—changing direction with a sharp clicking of the wheels and a heavy swaying of the huge car’s body. And now the line of coaches was straightening itself to take, as Phœbe knew, that long plunge under the southward flowing Hudson.