A day or two went by, and Phebe, though rapidly convalescing, was still a prisoner to her room.

“You’re missing a lot of fun,” said Bell Masters, sympathetically, as she bustled in to see her one morning, and sat down by the window, pushing back the curtain so that she could look out into the street and nod to passers as she talked.  “There’s no end going on.  Dear me, it’s a shame to come to you empty-handed, Phebe.  I had two or three rosebuds for you,—­beauties they were too,—­but the fact is I gave them away piecemeal as I came along, and I haven’t one left.  It seemed as if I met every man there was this morning.  How soon do you think you’ll be out again?”

“I don’t know,” answered Phebe, pushing a box of bonbons within reach of Bell’s easy-going fingers.  “I think I might go down-stairs now, but Dr. Dennis won’t let me.”

“Too bad.  You’ll miss Dick’s coming of age, won’t you?  There are to be high doings.  Mr. Hardcastle is too mysterious and pompous to live.  One can’t get any thing out of him but just ’My son Dick doesn’t come of age but once’ (as if we thought it was a yearly occurrence), ’and we don’t celebrate it but once.’  But I got hold of Dick privately and wheedled it out of him in less than no time with a piece of soft gingerbread.  It’s to be something stunning.  His father wanted to do it up in English style, dinner to the tenantry, and all that sort of thing, only unluckily there wasn’t any tenantry, and he had to abandon the benevolent role and take to a jollier one.  He won’t show off as well, but we’ll have a deal more fun.  It’s to be a sort of royal picnic, but in the evening, mind,—­wasn’t that a brilliant idea for the old gentleman?  We are all to go up in boats, and there are to be great rafts with blazing torches, and a supper in the woods grander than any of Mrs. Upjohn’s, and bonfires, and the band from Galilee, and bouquets for the ladies, and I don’t know what not, and best of all, unlimited opportunities for flirting.  It’s to be the affair of this and every other season past or future.  It’s a crying shame you can’t go.”

“Oh! how I wish I could!” sighed poor Phebe.

“I made pa give me a new dress for it,” continued Bell, leaning forward to pick off the biggest grapes from a bunch on the table.  “I mean to look just too-too.  Mr. De Forest is going to row me up.  I don’t know exactly how I made him ask me, but I did.  It’s such a triumph to get him away from Miss Vernor for once, though I suspect I’ll have to pay for it by doing more than half the rowing myself.  I don’t suppose he would exert his precious self to pull an oar more than five minutes at a time.  Amy tried her best to get Mr. Halloway, and so did the Dexters.  The way those girls run after him is a caution even to me; but they didn’t get him.  He’s monstrously clever in keeping out of people’s clutches.  I gave him up long ago as a bad job.  Well, good-by, Phebe.  Awfully sorry you can’t go.  Everybody’ll be there, and it’s to be the biggest lark out.”