"Good night, loyal Phyllis; I can never love you nor thank you enough for Bab, who is not likely to realize fully what you have done. I'm not partial to you; I can't do you justice, but at least I know it," said Jessamy, taking Phyllis and the kitten into a comprehensive embrace and kissing her with her heart on her lips.
Tired out with their long talk, and chilled in the night air, Jessamy and Phyllis soon fell asleep, and forgot the troubles hanging over them in the dreamless rest of their years.
Phyllis wrote her letter to Mrs. Dean, and posted it without a word to any one save Jessamy. There was no use in getting her aunt's permission to go to Boston until she had found out whether the opportunity of going were still open to her.
It was difficult to wait the answer, keep the secret, and behave in the old way, as in the days when there were no secrets and, above all, no consciousness of changes that were far from pleasant in what Barbara had called "the squareness of the square." But though it was not an easy task, Jessamy and Phyllis accomplished it fairly well, and, fortunately, it did not require doing long. Mrs. Dean replied very quickly to Phyllis's note, with unmistakable pleasure bidding her welcome at the earliest possible time she could set out.
Mrs. Wyndham could not be brought to listen to the plan when it was first broached to her; there was not the slightest need, she said, of Phyllis's leaving home; indeed it was unwise for her to go until she and Jessamy had first tested their hope of working together for the magazines, for which Jessamy especially seemed suddenly so well prepared. But Phyllis begged very hard to be allowed to try her wings, pleading restlessness and a longing to see more of the world; especially, she reminded her aunt, because no one could hope to write well who lived in one narrow routine. Jessamy seconded her plea, and said they should work together quite as effectually with Phyllis in Boston, for she would send her stories home for Jessamy to illustrate, and nothing would be lost by separation.
Mrs. Wyndham was a little hurt at first by Phyllis's insistence, and then not a little suspicious; it was so improbable that a restless desire to roam should come suddenly upon home-loving Phyllis in the midst of her supreme content in their new housekeeping. Though she did not suspect that Barbara had any connection with the plan, she did surmise that Phyllis was running away from an unwelcome lover, and so gave her consent reluctantly at last. Bab herself took the news with dumb amazement at first, then evidently with an irreconcilable mixture of emotions. It was past comprehending that Phyllis did not care for Tom, and yet this sudden change of spirit, following Ruth's disclosure, left no other solution. Bab did not believe that any one suspected what it was costing her to think that even Phyllis was first in Tom's esteem; she hoped that no one saw that Phyllis's going away was a relief to her, and she hated herself that it should be so.