EA had been early, so that Phyllis could go to tennis; but she insisted on staying “to make everybody comfortable” before she went. She brought Uncle William's paper, and put his ash tray at his elbow. She set Uncle John's chessmen on the table by the window, and arranged the stool for his gouty foot. She fetched Aunt Mary's account book, and Aunt Julia's embroidery, and found the thimble which had been mislaid—in Aunt Julia's pocket. Then she bowed to them ceremoniously.
“You can say good-by to little Phyllis,” she announced. “When I come downstairs I shall be grown up!”
She laughed and ran from the room. She always laughed, and she usually ran.
“She means,” Aunt Julia stated solemnly, “that she is going to put up her hair!”
Uncle William looked up from the money article.
“Why not?” he asked.
“Why not?” Uncle John echoed, holding the white queen suspended in the air.
“She won't be a child any longer.” Aunt Julia wiped her eyes.
“Not to herself, perhaps,” Uncle William agreed, “but she will be to us.”
“Not to some other people,” Aunt Mary said quietly. “We thought her mother a child, if you recollect, till we found her engaged.”
Uncle William paused in the act of lighting his cigar, and let the match go out.
“Of course,' he remarked thoughtfully, “some one will come along some day, and—I suppose our little girl will get married.”
Uncle John put a bishop on the wrong color, and upset the black king.
“What nonsense!” he cried. “She isn't eighteen! I suppose she is, though. Dear me! How the time flies! It must be four years since she came to us.”
“Four years and three months on the fifteenth,” Aunt Mary stated. “It was at the very end of winter, if you remember, and she wore that little squirrel coat that William bought her for the journey. We thought her rather a trial at first.”
“We thought we thought so,” Uncle William corrected. “If we did, we've thought her a comfort for the last two years of the time anyhow. Sometimes I wish she were back at fourteen again. Well, she had to grow up; and we've grown her nicely. She has improved wonderfully. I often think that we have, too. The child has been an education to us,”
He lit his cigar at last, and puffed at it.
“Yes,” Aunt Mary agreed. “Yes, I have often thought so; but the improvement is in her, too. I never dreamed that she would be so sensible and helpful. She remembers things better than I do. I am afraid my memory is not quite what it was. I can trust her to dust the best ornaments even. She looks as if she might break them, but she never does. Her mother was like that. She laughed and talked and seemed careless, but you could depend upon her all the same. Phyllis grows more like her every day. She has just the same way of smiling people into things. Norah was engaged at eighteen.”
“People have more sense nowadays,” Uncle William asserted. “If you and Julia don't put nonsense in her head”
Then Phyllis danced in with her mass of brown hair fastened up at the back of her head, and her big eyes sparkling.
“Now!” she cried. “Don't I look grown up?” She seized Uncle William's paper. “You mustn't read silly money articles when a beautiful grown-up lady comes to see you. Now, Uncle Bill—I mean William, of course—don't I look very nice and grown up?”
Uncle William rose and turned her round. Then he bowed to her, and she bowed to him.
“Madam,” he said, “you look very nice, and rather grown up. Well, well! Don't grow up too fast. I don't like losing my little girl. God bless you!”
He patted her shoulder.
She laughed and kissed him. Then she went and pulled Uncle John round from the chessboard.
“What do you think of me?” she wanted to know.
He stared at her as intently as if she were a chess problem.
“You are like your mother,” he said slowly. “She was always better looking than the rest of us, and—God bless you, Phil!”
Phyllis kissed him; and then Aunt Julia kissed her.
“It might be Norah's self,” she pronounced shakily.
Aunt Mary kissed the girl silently; adjusted a hairpin or two, and stepped back to note the effect.
“Twenty years ago,” she remarked, “I helped your mother to do up her hair for the first time. I little thought It wants catching up here, or it will shake out when you play tennis, There! You look very nice, dear.”
“And grown up?” the girl inquired eagerly.
Her aunts sighed, and so did Uncle John. Uncle William managed to laugh.
“Does grown up spell more dress allowance, Miss Artful?” he inquired.
“No, sir!” she denied. “I do not require money, but admiration.”