Part 3 (1/2)

”And is this frantic outburst meant exclusively for Soeur Angelique?”

asked Denham. ”I am green with unutterable jealousy. I thought I was your friend too, Miss Phebe.”

Phebe still knelt with her arms around Mrs. Whittridge, but she looked up at him with her frank, loving eyes and smiled. ”You know I meant you both,” she said softly.

An almost irresistible impulse came over the young man to lay his hand, as his sister had done, on the soft, bright-brown hair. Clergymen are but human after all. He bent forward, but only lifted one of his sister's thin white hands and held it a moment between his. ”We must both do our best by this foolish little girl who trusts us so frankly with her friends.h.i.+p, must we not, Soeur Angelique?” he said gravely.

”I for one am very glad to a.s.sume the trust,” said Mrs. Whittridge.

”And won't you ever tire of me? ever? ever?” asked the girl.

”Not ever.”

”You won't ever be tired helping me, or tired of having me come to you for help, or tired of my loving you?”

”Where is your faith gone, my child?”

Phebe drew a deep sigh of content. ”I am just as happy as can be,” she said. ”I don't want any thing else now in the world except just Gerald.”

”Ah, Gerald again. I expected that,” said Mr. Halloway, raising his eyebrows humorously.

”Gerald? Pray, who is Gerald?” inquired Mrs. Whittridge.

Her brother lifted his hands in mock amazement. ”Is it possible you know Miss Phebe so long and need ask who Gerald is? I will tell you. Gerald is perfection individualized. Gerald has all the qualities, mental, physical, and spiritual, that it is possible to compress into the limited compa.s.s of even an overgrown human frame. Gerald, you must know, is intellectual to a degree, beautiful as an archangel, adorable as--as you, Soeur Angelique, and clever--almost--as myself.”

Phebe clapped her hands and nodded, ”Yes, yes, all that!”

”I can tell you all about Gerald,” continued Halloway. ”I have heard of nothing else since I came. Gerald, my dear sister, is Miss Phebe's idol; I rather think she says her prayers before Gerald's picture every night.”

”Oh, please!” cried Phebe.

”But who is this Gerald?” asked Mrs. Whittridge. ”Does he live here?”

”No, Soeur Angelique, and by the way he is not he at all, but she, and will be known in history as Miss Geraldine Vernor. She lives in New York, rolls in wealth, and is one of a large family of whom she is the sun-flower. Let me give you her portrait as I have it from fragmentary but copious descriptions. She is, I should say, five feet eleven and three quarter inches in height--don't shake your head, Miss Phebe,--and slender in disproportion. She has the feet of a Chinese, the hands of a baby, and the strength of a Jupiter Ammon. She has hair six yards long and blacker than Egyptian darkness. She has a forehead so low it rests upon her eyebrows, which, by the way, have been ruled straight across the immeasurable breadth of it with a T square. She has eyes bluer one minute than the grotto at Capri, greener the next than gra.s.s in June, grayer the next than a November day, and so on in turn through all the prismatic colors. Her eyelashes are only not quite so long as her hair.

She has a mouth which would strike you as large,--it is five and a half inches across,--but when she speaks, and you hear the combined wisdom of Solomon, and Plato, and Socrates, and Solon, and the rest of the ancients (not to mention the moderns), falling from her lips, your only wonder is that her mouth keeps within its present limits. Her nose--Miss Phebe, can it be? Is it possible you have left out her nose? Soeur Angelique, I am forced to the melancholy conclusion that Gerald has none. Miss Phebe would never have omitted mentioning it.”

”You may make all the fun of her and of me that you like,” said Phebe, half provoked. ”But there is not anybody else in the world like Gerald Vernor. Wait till you see her. You will say then that I was right, only that I did not say enough.”

”You shan't tease her, Denham. Tell me, Phebe, where did you know this friend so well?”

”Three years ago, when she spent a summer here, I saw a great deal of her,--oh, it made it such a happy summer, knowing her!--and I have corresponded with her ever since.”

”Without meeting her again?”

”Oh, no. I saw her twice last summer. I went to the train both times to see her as she pa.s.sed through.”

”But our trains don't pa.s.s through; they stop here.”

”Yes, I know; but I went to Galilee to meet her as she pa.s.sed through there.”

”Would she have gone as far as that to meet you, Miss Phebe?”