Phœbe wanted so many things in those school-day years but she wanted most of all to become like Miss Lee. So earnestly did she try to speak as her teacher taught her that after a time the peculiar idioms and expressions became more infrequent and there was only a delightfully quaint inflection, an occasional phrase, to betray her Pennsylvania Dutch parentage. But in times of stress or excitement she invariably slipped back into the old way and prefaced her exclamations with an expressive "Ach!"
Life on the Metz farm went on in even tenor year in and year out. Maria Metz never changed to any appreciable extent her mode of living or her methods of working, and she tried to teach Phœbe to conform to the same monotonous existence and live as several generations of Metzes had done. But Phœbe was a veritable Evelyn Hope, made of "spirit, fire and dew." The distinctiveness of her personality grew more pronounced as she slipped from childhood into girlhood and Maria Metz needed often to encourage her own heart for the task of rearing into ideal womanhood the daughter of her brother Jacob.
Phœbe had a deep love for nature and this love was fostered by her sturdy farmer-father. As she followed him about the fields he taught her the names of wild flowers, told her the nesting haunts of birds, initiated her into the circle of tree-lore, taught her to keep ears, eyes and heart open for the treasures of the great outdoors.
Phœbe required no urging in that direction. Her heart was filled with an insatiable desire to know more and more of the beautiful world about her. She gathered knowledge from every country walk; she showed so much "uncommon sense," David Eby said, that it was a keen pleasure to show her the nests of the thrush or the rare nests of the humming-bird. David and his mother, enthusiastic seekers after nature knowledge, augmented the father's nature education of Phœbe by frequent walks to field and woods. And so, when Phœbe was twelve years old she knew the haunts of all the wild flowers within walking distance of her home. With her father or with David and Mother Bab she found the first marsh-marigolds in the meadows, the first violets of the wooded slope of the hill, the earliest hepatica with its woolly buds, the first windflowers and spring beauties. She knew when the time was come for the bloodroot to lift its pure white petals about the golden hearts in the spot where the rich mould at the base of some giant tree nurtured the blooded plants. She could find the canopied Jack-in-the-pulpit and the pink azalea on the hill near her home. She knew the exact spot, a mile from the gray farmhouse, where, in a lovely little wood by a quiet road, a profusion of bird-foot violets and bluets made a carpet of blue loveliness each spring--so on, through the fleet days of summer, till the last asters and goldenrod faded, the child reveled in the beauties and wonders of the world at her feet and loved every part of it, from the tiny blue speedwell in the grass to the gorgeous orioles in the trees. What if Aunt Maria sometimes scolded her for bringing so many "weeds" into the house! With apparent unconcern she placed her flowers in a glass or earthen jar and secretly thought, "Well, I'm glad I like these pretty things; they are not weeds to me."
