Gates Ajar Author:Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. March 7. I have taken out my book, and am going to write again. But there is an excellent reason. I have something else than myself to write about. ... more » This morning Phoebe persuaded me to walk down to the office, " To keep up my spirits and get some salt pork." She brought my things and put them on me while I was hesitating ; tied my victorine and buttoned my gloves; warmed my boots, and fussed about me as if I had been a baby. It did me good to be taken care of, and I thanked her softly ; a little more softly than I am apt to speak to Phoebe. " Bless your soul, my dear!" she said, winking briskly, " I don't want no thanks. It's thanks enough jest to see one of your old looks comin' over you for a spell, sence—" She knocked over a chair with her broom, and left her sentence unfinished. Phoebe hasalways had a queer, clinging, superior sort of love for us both. She dandled us on her knees, and made all our rag-dolls, and carried us through measles and mumps and the rest. Then mother's early death threw all the care upon her. I believe that in her secret heart she considers me more her child than her mistress. It cost a great many battles to become established as " Miss Mary." " I should like to know," she would say, throwing back her great, square shoulders and towering up in front of me, — "I should like to know if you s'pose I 'm a goin' to ' Miss' anybody that I 've trotted to Bamberry Cross as many times as I have you, Mary Cabot! Catch me !" I remember how she would insist on calling me " her baby " after I was in long dresses, and that it mortified me cruelly once when Meta Tripp was here to tea with some Boston cousins. Poor, good Phoebe ! Her rough love seems worth more to me, now that it is all I have left me in the world. It occurs to me that I may...« less