"Anything you asked him too," said Bab. "I have known about Tom for some time, Phyllis. That was not news to me to-day. Of course, I don't want his help, nor any medicine. And I wish you would let me alone, Phyllis; I don't want you to touch me, or bother with me. I have a headache; you said those cakes would hurt me. Can't I have a headache or be blue without being bothered? You all think I never have a sober moment because I generally am cutting capers. I'll caper again, never fear. But, honestly, I don't want to see you now, Phyllis. I hope I'm not rude, but you're driving me mad. Do go! I hoped you were out of the house for an hour or so. Flats are horrid! A body can't cry a minute in one. Go, go, _go_, Phyllis; only go." Barbara was getting hysterical, and Phyllis rose without another word. Her own face was full of pain as she turned away, and her eyes looked big with dismayed surprise. She turned back and kissed Barbara. "You'll be better if you take a nap," she said. It cut her like a knife that Bab shrank from her lips.
Phyllis went to her own room, and sat down in her little rocking-chair without taking off her hat. Here was trouble indeed, and childhood's peaceful days looked very sweet and distant.
Phyllis sat looking, with unseeing eyes, out upon the small courtyard below her window for more than an hour. All day her brain had been full of sweet, indefinite girlish dreams from which Bab's grief had aroused her into most definitely unpleasant waking. She was a sensible little body, and she knew that she was not yet fond enough of Tom to make it tragic that she must find measures to break off his increasing affection for her; nor was she conceited enough to believe that it would be fatal to Tom's happiness for all time to drive him from her. It was as though a vision of vague and beautiful possibilities had arisen before her, from which she must turn away her eyes; it was not that she was rejecting a present good, but that which might grow into a very precious gift in the future. She shrank from the idea of a lover yet, feeling too young and too content in her girlhood to tolerate losing it, but Tom was a dear, good, splendid boy, and by and by, possibly, when she was older and ready to be a woman--then who could tell? Perhaps she would grow fonder of him--so fond that--