The Byrds have to stay in the cottage until Father can build another house for us to move into.  Of course they will go back to Byrd Mansion and reign in it as they have always done.  But I smile to myself that one person got ahead of that stiff-necked old portrait—­I did, and once she even seemed to smile down on me.

This was the time she seemed to do it.  We had all been talking about the plans for the new house down in the orchard, for Father and me, when Roxanne had to fly to Lovelace Peyton and Father tiptoed after her just to peep at him a second.  That left the Idol and me alone for a few minutes.  How I would have shuddered at the mere thought of such a thing happening to me a few months ago, but now it just seemed agreeable happiness.  Through suffering I have grown bold, in my adoration of him.

“Let him build his old house, Phyllis,” he said with first a glance up at the old Grandmother Byrd and then one at me that was as bashful as I began all suddenly to feel again, when he took my hand in his.  “He won’t—­won’t keep you—­that is, not many years—­will he?”

“Why,—­what do you—­” I began to ask him, when Father came back into the room and I don’t know to this day what the Idol meant to say, nor do I yet know what he meant by drawing himself up to his full Byrd pride height, while he looked Father straight in the eye, both of them alarmingly serious, until Father’s eyes began to smile with what seemed to be warm confidence.  At which the Idol let go my hand and began to talk about steel.  Oh, I am so glad, glad I am here to help Roxanne to cherish such a genius as he is and that I know now for our whole lives no pride or anything cruel can come between him and me any more!  I can keep him perpetually safe on the pedestal of my love and I feel that it will be my right to help feed and patch him—­only now he can always buy new trousers.

And for all time I have found Father!

That night when I went in to commune with Mother like I do now more and more, I found him in my chair in the corner but out of her sight, and he drew me down on his knee for the first time in all my life.  We sat quiet awhile and then he came into my room with me and we stood at the window and looked out over the Harpeth Valley, where Providence Road lay like a silver ribbon as it wound its way over Providence Knob.  He had his arm around me, and as I have learned to do, I put my head down on his shoulder.

“Phil,” he said with such sadness in his voice that the new-learned tears started, “this is all we will ever have of Bess.  The doctor says she has begun to drift faster now, and it will not be long.  What would I have done if I had lost even what she had been to me these sad years—­before I found you to help me?”