Part 13 (1/2)

”What's on your face?” asked one woman sternly.

Phbe hung her head, abashed.

”That's how nice she plays when I leave her go up on the garret and have a nice time instead of making her sew like she always has to Sat.u.r.days,”

Aunt Maria said in sharp tones which told the child all too plainly of the displeasure she had caused.

”I didn't mean,” Phbe looked up contritely, ”I didn't mean to be bad and make you cross. I was just playing I was a big singer and I put cold cream and paint and powder on my face----”

”Cream!”

”Paint!”

”Powder!”

The shrill staccato words of the women set the child trembling.

”But--but,” she faltered, ”it'll all wash off.” She gave a convincing nod of her head and rubbed a hand ruefully across the grotesquely decorated cheek. ”It's just cream and red-beet juice and flour.”

”Did I ever!” exclaimed the mother of Phares Eby.

”I-to-goodness!” laughed Granny Hogendobler.

”Vanity, vanity, all is vanity,” quoted one of the other women.

”Come here, Phbe,” said the mother of David Eby, and that woman, a thin, alert little person with tender, kindly eyes, drew the unhappy little girl to her. ”You poor, precious child,” she said, ”it's a shame for us all to sit here and look at you as if we wanted to eat you.

You've just been playing, haven't you?” She turned to the other women.

”Why, Maria, Susan, I remember just as well as if it were only yesterday how we used to rub our cheeks with rough mullein leaves to make them red for Love Feast, don't you remember?”

Aunt Maria's cheeks grew pink. ”Ach, Barbara, mebbe we did that when we were young and foolish, but we didn't act like this.”

”Not much different, I guess,” said Phbe's champion with a smile. ”Only we forget it now. Phbe is just like we were once and she'll get over it like we did. Let her play; she'll soon be too old to want to play or to know how. She ain't a bad child, just full of life and likes to do things other people don't think of doing.”

”She, surely does,” said Aunt Maria curtly, ill pleased by the woman's words. ”Where that child gets all her notions from I'd like to know.

It's something new every day.”

”She'll be all right when she gets older,” said David's mother.

”Be sure, yes,” agreed Granny Hogendobler; ”it don't do to be too strict.”

”Mebbe so,” said the other women, with various shades of understanding in their words.

Phbe looked gratefully into the face of Granny Hogendobler, then she turned to David's mother and spoke to her as though there were no others present in the room.

”You know, don't you, how little girls like to play? You called me precious child just like she would----”

”She would,” repeated Aunt Maria. ”What do you mean?”

”I mean my mother,” she explained and turned again to her champion. ”I was just thinking this after on the garret that I'd like you for my mother, to adopt you for it like people do with children when they have none and want some. I hear lots of people call you Aunty Bab--dare I call you Mother Bab?”