“At last he’s gittin’ a little cheer in his face.  But every so often the gloomy fit comes over him like it did last night at supper.  I keep tellin’ him it ain’t Christian, with her dead two years a’ready—­but he won’t listen ... he’s got to have his fit out each time.”

* * * * *

As if this had not been enough of the tragic, the next day when I asked about Phoebe, Aunt Rachel started crying.

“Phoebe’s gone, too,” she sobbed.

“O, Aunt Rachel, I’m so sorry ... but I didn’t know ... nobody told me.”

“That’s all right, Johnnie.  Somehow it relieves me to talk about Phoebe.”  She rose from her rocker, laid down her darning, and went to a dresser in the next room.  She came out again, holding forth to me a picture ...  Phoebe’s picture....

A shy, small, oval, half-wild face like that of a dryad’s.  Her chin lifted as if she were some wood-creature listening to the approaching tread of the hunter and ready on the instant to spring forth and run along the wind....

An outdoor picture, a mere snapshot, but an accidental work of art.

Voluminous leafage blew behind and above her head, splashed with the white of sunlight and the gloom of swaying shadow.

“Why, she’s—­she’s beautiful!”

“Yes—­got prettier and prettier every time you looked at her....”

“But,” and Aunt Rachel sighed, “I couldn’t do nothin’ with her at all.  An’ scoldin’ an’ whippin’ done no good, neither.  Josh useter whip her till he was blue in the face, an’ she wouldn’t budge.  Only made her more sot and stubborner....

“—­guess she was born the way she was ... she never could stay still a minute ... always fidgettin’ ... when she was a little girl, even—­I used to say, ‘Now, look here, Phoebe,’ I’d say, ’your ma ’ull give you a whole dime all at once if you’ll set still jest for five minutes in that chair.’  An’ she’d try ... and, before sixty seconds was ticked off she’d be on her feet, sayin’, ‘Ma, I guess you kin keep that dime.’

“When she took to runnin’ out at nights,” my great-aunt continued, in a low voice, “yes, an’ swearin’ back at her pa when he gave her a bit of his mind, it nigh broke my heart ... and sometimes she’d see me cryin’, and that would make her feel bad an’ she’d quiet down fer a few days ... an’ she’d say, ‘Ma, I’m goin’ to be a good girl now,’ an’ fer maybe two or three nights she’d help clean up the supper-things—­an’ then—­” with a breaking voice, “an’ then all at once she’d scare me by clappin’ both hands to that pretty brown head o’ hers, in sech a crazy way, an’ sayin’, ’Honest, Ma, I can’t stand it any longer ... this life’s too slow....  I’ve gotta go out where there’s some life n’ fun!’

“It was only toward the last that she took to sneakin’ out after she pretended to go to bed.. gangs of boys an’ girls, mixed, would come an’ whistle soft fer her, under the window ... an’ strange men would sometimes hang aroun’ the house ... till Josh went out an’ licked a couple.