: Phœbe by Gates Eleanor - Teenage girls Juvenile fiction; Families Juvenile fiction; Children of divorced parents Juvenile fiction; Scandals Juvenile fiction

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PHOEBE

BY ELEANOR GATES

THE POOR LITTLE RICH GIRL, APRON STRINGS, THE PRAIRIE GIRL, ETC.

NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT 1919, BY ELEANOR GATES

AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED TO THAT LITTLE GIRL WHOSE STORY IT IS

PHOEBE

The train was already moving. Phoebe, 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 Phoebe 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, Phoebe 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 Phoebe to those paternal relations?

It was all very strange! It was mysterious, like--yes, like stories Phoebe 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, Phoebe 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 Phoebe knew, that long plunge under the southward flowing Hudson.

She let the telegram fall to her lap and closed her eyes, with a drawing in of the breath. She was picturing all that lay above the roof of the car and the larger domed roof of the tunnel--first there was the river-bed, which the domed roof upheld; next, the wide, deep reach of water which, in turn, held up the ferries and any other passing ships; last of all, the sky, cloud-flecked and sun-lit, through which winged the birds. What a load for that narrow, domed roof!

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