Andrew the Glad | Page 9

lady is under your

roof?"
"Soon, dear. She is very tired to-day, and I feel sure you will--"
"Miss Matilda," called Tempie from the hall, "Miss Phoebe is holdin'
the phone fer you. She's at Mis' Cantrell's and she wants ter speak with
you right away."
"Wait, wait, don't answer her right now--ring her off, Tempie! If she
has trouble getting you, Mrs. Matilda, and you keep her talking I can
catch her. Let me get a good start and then answer. Good-by! Keep
talking to her!" And with determination in his eyes David took his
hurried departure.
"Good-by, good luck--and good hunting!" called the major after him.
And with the greatest skilfulness Mrs. Buchanan held Phoebe in hand
for enough minutes to insure David's capture before she returned to the
library.
"Major," she said as she rubbed her cheek against his velvet coat sleeve,
"why do you suppose Phoebe doesn't love David? I can't understand it."
"Matilda," answered the major as he blew a little curl over one of the
soft puffs of her white hair, "you were born in a day when women were
all run into a love-mold. They are poured into other assorted fancy
shapes in these times, but heat from the right source melts them all the
same. We can trust David's ardor, I think."
"Yes, I believe you are right," she answered judicially, "and Phoebe
inherits lovingness from her mother. I feel that she is more affectionate
than she shows, and I just go on and love her anyway. She lets me do it
very often."
And from the depth of her unsophisticated heart Mrs. Buchanan had
evolved a course of action that had gone far in comforting a number of
the lonely years through which Phoebe Donelson had waded. She had
been young, and high-spirited and intensely proud when she had begun

to fight her own battles in her sixteenth year. Many loving hands of her
mother's and father's old friends had been held out to her with a bounty
of protection, but she had gone her course and carved her own fortune.
Her social position had made things easy for her in a way and now her
society editorship of the leading journal had become a position from
which she wielded much power over the gay world that delighted in her
wit and beauty, took her autocratic dictums in most cases, and followed
her vogue almost absolutely.
Her independence prompted her to live alone in a smart down-town
apartment with her old negro mammy, but her affections demanded that
she take refuge at all times under the sheltering wings of Mrs.
Buchanan, who kept a dainty nest always in readiness for her.
The tumultuous wooing of David Kildare had been going on since her
early teens under the delighted eyes of the major, who in turn both
furthered and hindered the suit by his extremely philosophical advice.
Phoebe was the crystallization of an infusion of the blood of many
cultured, high-bred, haughty women which had been melted in the
retort of a stern necessity and had come out a rather brilliant specimen
of the modern woman, if a bit hard. Viewed in some ways she became
an alarming augury of the future, but there are always potent
counter-forces at work in life's laboratory, and the kind of forces that
David Kildare brought to bear in his wooing were never exactly to be
calculated upon. And so the major spent much time in the
contemplation of the problem presented.
And when she had come in after a late lunch to call upon their guest, it
had been intensely interesting to the major to regard the effect of the
meeting of Phoebe's and Caroline Darrah's personalities. Caroline's
lovely, shy child's eyes had melted with delight under Phoebe's straight,
gray, friendly glances and her fascination for the tall, strong, radiant
woman, who sat beside her, had been so obvious that the major had
chuckled to himself under his breath as he watched them make friends,
under Mrs. Matilda's poorly concealed anxiety that they should at once
adopt cordial relations.

"And so he consented to undertake the commission for you because he
was interested?" Phoebe was asking as they talked about the sketches
of the statue. A very great sculptor was doing the work for Caroline
Darrah Brown, and it interested Phoebe to hear how he had consented
to accept so unimportant a commission.
"Yes," answered Caroline in her exquisite voice which showed only the
faintest liquid trace of her southern inheritance. "I told him all about it
and he became interested. He is very great, and simple, and kind. He
made it easy to show him how I felt. I couldn't tell him much except
how I felt; but I think it has something of--that--in--it. Don't you think