Oh, I do love my father—I do—I do!

CHAPTER IV

It does seem a pity that a person can't put an Idol on a pedestal and keep it here without having it come down and bother around the house. The idea of being introduced to Mr. Douglass Byrd and having to speak directly to him with my own voice has kept me miserable all this month in which I have been so perfectly happy being Roxanne's friend and confidante, but it has happened and I'm glad it's over, though it was under trying circumstances.

These are they. My fears have come to pass and in this eventful month Lovelace Peyton has grown from a slender, frail little boy into almost as much of a roly-poly as Mamie Sue, and looks more like her than he does like Roxanne. I try not to feed him more than four times a day extra, but he is stern with me about it. Sometimes he will trade the cake I give him about four o'clock for a new shaped bottle, but lots of times he gets the bottle and the cake both away from me. I just can't be strong-minded with Lovelace Peyton, like I ought to be to make up for the way Roxanne forgets to see him from the rosy cloud.

"If you'll give me a bottle, I'll give you one mouth-kiss, Phyllis; but for cake and bottles too, I can maybe make it two," is the way he bargains with me. Fifteen years is a long time to starve for a little brother to love, so Lovelace Peyton almost always gets both the cake and bottles.

But his fat has begun to burst out of all the clothes he has and somebody has got to get him new ones. Roxanne and I were managing it when Mr. Douglass interrupted us this morning; and I'm glad a man is so much stupider than a woman or maybe his feelings would have got hurt and I'd have had to argue him into my plan like I did Roxanne. I feel sure I would have failed with him. He is the first Idol I ever had and I am new at managing either friends or idols. However, I have got so I can get the best of Roxanne when it is urgently necessary.

"It's the funniest thing to me, Phyllis," Roxanne said the other afternoon, as I went over to see her about my rhetoric lesson, "but rich as you are, I don't at all mind your seeing my scrimps like I do the other girls, even Mamie Sue. You are like finding a grandmother's thimble that fits you exactly and is pure gold."

Oh, I wish I could learn to be gracious and say lovely things like Roxanne, but I'm just a corked bottle and I can't get the stopper out.

"What are you doing?" I asked her instead of giving her a squeeze and saying, "You are the dearest thing on earth to me, Roxanne," which was what I really felt.

"I'm sitting here before this old dress I found in the trunk in the attic and trying to think how I could make Lovey wear the flowered aprons I can make out of it. I almost know he won't, for he has begun to say what 'looks boy' and what 'looks girl.' I did hope I could keep him ignorant of the difference this summer at least. Would you ask him before you make the aprons or trust to his not noticing?"

The old dress was the full skirt of fifty years ago, with huge red roses on a white-and-green dotted background, and, as aprons, would have made the snake doctor look like a very young circus. I couldn't stand the thought and cranked my mind as hard as I could for a half minute. The idea came, and it is a good thing to be perfectly straight in the treatment of your friends at all times, so that when a crisis comes they will depend on you.

"Roxanne," I said, looking determinedly and sternly into her face with Father's own expression, "have I ever offered you a single thing to eat except when you were company like the other girls, or anything else that would hurt the Byrd pride?"

"No, you haven't, Phyllis, and that's why I don't mind telling or letting you see things. You understand that it is for the cause, and I don't have to be afraid that you will hurt—hurt my feelings."

I never thought it would be possible for a girl to look at me like Roxanne Byrd looked at me across the pile of ragged little aprons and old dresses. I thank God for it!

"Well," I said, "for that dress I want to trade you this blue gingham I have got on to make the aprons out of. It will make three if the tucks are ripped out of the skirt. I want the old flowered skirt to make some cushions for the window seat in the room I sleep in, for it will be just the thing to go with the old mahogany of your grandmother's. It is real old-fashioned chintz and is worth just about ten times as much as this dress I have got on, which you know I bought at Mr. Hadley's, with the other dozen ones that Miss Green is making for me, at twenty-five cents a yard. Will you?"

Roxanne doesn't know about that awful spending burden I have had laid on me and she is just as interested in helping me go and buy myself Byrdsville clothes as a friend can be in another's pleasure—not knowing it to be painful responsibility.

I locked the box that came from New York with all my spring and summer things in it, in a closet the day it came, and while these things are, of course crude, I like to be in clothes like the other girls. I seem to fit in better. I spent seventy-five dollars at that store by hard effort, and I think won Mr. Hadley's good will for life for both Father and me. Also Miss Green's check was gratifyingly large both to her and me.

"Will you trade, Roxanne?" I asked again, keeping the eagerness out of my voice with my father's stern will.

"Oh, I don't think I ought." Roxanne hesitated and then said: "Are you sure you don't—that is, are you sure?"

"I am," I answered briskly, and in a business like tone. "You can't say that lovely old stuff won't make the very cushions for that very room, Roxanne."

"They truly will be lovely, Phyllis, and that gingham will solve the problem for Lovey's whole summer. To-morrow we will—"

"Not to-morrow; right now, and I'll help you rip and cut out from the skirt," I said, and began to undo my belt. I knew better than to let that family pride get to simmering in Roxanne in the wee small hours of the night. "A trade is a trade, as soon as it is made. Give me my dress."

"Oh, Phyllis, there never was anybody like you," laughed Roxanne in a voice that is like music to a person who understands what friendship really is and hasn't had very much.

We both laughed as I slipped the quaint old dress over my head and buttoned the low-necked waist, with its short puffy-sleeves, straight down the front. It had such a style of its own and fitted me so that I began to prance in front of the long mirror in the living room, which is gilt, a hundred years old, and belonged to the stiff grandmother over the mantel who had probably pranced in the same gown in the same way fifty years ago, if her heart was as young and happy as mine.

And those were the trying circumstances under which I met the Idol. He stood there in the doorway and laughed until his big shoulders shook, and his wonderful eyes danced like sparks. I blushed so painfully that it felt like measles; but when he saw my embarrassment break out on me like that, a wonderful sad kindness came into his eyes and he stopped laughing.

He stood there in the doorway and laughed until his big shoulders shook

He stood there in the doorway and laughed until his big shoulders shook

"It's Miss Phyllis Forsythe, isn't it, that I have come home to find masquerading as my own grandmother?" he said, in a warm voice so like Roxanne's that the scarlatina on my face began to subside and my knees stopped trembling. "You don't know how indebted to you I am for coming over to make Roxy take a playtime."

Playtime, with all that pattern and darned aprons and my gingham dress in a pile on the ancestral sofa in the corner with the scissors and needle and thread gaping at Roxanne and me from the table! Women ought to be very thankful at times for men's stupidity.

It was all very well for the red on my face to pale and my breath to come easier again; but no fifteen-year-old girl has an answer ready for a remark of a man who is as great and wonderful and famous as Mr. Douglass Byrd is going to be soon. I was just getting so loose-jointed from mortification that my mind had fainted away at the very time I needed it, when Tony and Pink Chadwell came and broke into the situation with the Raccoon whistle for the palefaces. They also broke through the side window with their "Tip-hist-toe" signal that always gives the girls cold creeps even in daytime. Mamie Sue calls it goose-flesh and Tony reproves Belle for telling her that was what she had all the time. I don't know what we would do with Belle if it wasn't for Tony's powerful disposition. And one thing I am sure of, never were there in this world such grand boys as Anthony Wayne Luttrell and Matthew Foster Chadwell—that's Pink's whole name—for they didn't any more notice that old flowered dress than if it had been the blue gingham, or either Roxanne or me, but they gave the scout-master salute to Mr. Douglass and began their business right away.

"Raccoon Chief," said Tony, "the patrol awaits you in the Crotch, at your call."

"On my way," answered Mr. Douglass with just as much seriousness as Tony had in his voice. Tony had told me how Mr. Douglass had organized the Raccoon Patrol and taught it all it knows and was just the guiding star of all their young lives, only Tony didn't put it that way; he called him their "jolly old peace-maker." That means that all the Raccoons look up to him and adore him and try to be exactly like him. In the Bible if David had been eight years older than Jonathan, there would have been the same situation in Jerusalem as in Byrdsville, Tennessee.

"I wonder what is the matter with the Scouts," said Roxanne, as we both began to rip on the dress so I could help her cut the aprons. "Douglass didn't say what he came home for in the middle of the afternoon and Tony was so serious that I hardly knew him. Pink was speechless from excitement. They all acted that way when they found out about the queer man who hung around selling patent medicine, trying to find out where Miss Prissy kept the Talbot emerald necklace that came from England before the Revolution."

Because Miss Prissy lives alone it is the duty of all of the Raccoons to patrol her ever so many times in the day, and Judge Luttrell lets Tony go out the last thing before he goes to bed and give Miss Prissy that signal we hear every night about half past nine. Miss Prissy says it makes her comfortable the whole night, and the Colonel gave the Raccoons their wireless outfit for being such "Knights of the Round Miss Prissy" instead of the "Table," Pink said; though the Colonel never mentioned Miss Prissy in the speech of presentation at all, but called it Table.

I'm not romantic myself, but I could never treat a man with the lack of heart with which Miss Prissy treats Colonel Stockell. She makes herself as beautiful as possible and sits on the front porch with him, and I would call that an honorable cause for marriage, but Roxanne says that in Byrdsville no tie binds a lady to marry a gentleman until after it is done. Such treatment does not look to me like what father calls a "square deal"; but Miss Priscilla may have some way of squaring it to her conscience, as she is very religious and charitable.

"I'm glad Douglass doesn't have to know that we traded dresses, Phyllis," said Roxanne, as we both snipped away on the long seams, after he had gone with Tony and Pink. Why it is so much more fun to rip things than to sew them, is a question I put to you, leather Louise.

"Just last night," Roxanne continued, "he made me sit out here on the porch with him and he told me it might be all summer that he will have to use his wages to get the things for the experiments. Mr. Rogers has acted queerly and he is afraid to try anything out at these furnaces, so we have to save up enough for him to go up to Kentucky to some little furnaces there and make the experiment. It will cost a lot for the trip and the things, but I think we can do it. This simple life agrees with us all. Just look how fat Lovey is getting with hardly anything but buttermilk and corn-bread. It makes me happy to look at him."

The giggle that I had to smother down in my heart was one of the good things that come in a person's life and leave a mark on their natures for always. I think it is a fine plan to save little happinesses and put them up on a spirit shelf to take down to feed your remembers on in days when pleasures are scarce. I can't believe that this life of being with and of other people is going to last for me; so if I have to go back into loneliness I will have had it to remember.

Any mention of that dynamite secret and Rogers in the same conversation always makes me uneasy and that is why I had loneliness thoughts.

"What has Mr. Rogers done to make your brother uneasy about the secret?" I asked Roxanne in a voice that I could see, myself, was worried.

"Nothing at all," laughed Roxanne; "but we are all just as superstitious as old Uncle Pompey, and because Douglass has a 'feeling' about Mr. Rogers, we all have to have it, too. We make it a point to 'feel' with each other as both Douglass and I did when we just knew with Uncle Pompey that the white rooster would die from the lye soap that Lovey made him take in a pill. It took Douglass and me two whole days to get Lovey to go on his honor about doctoring the chicken, but he finally agreed, if we would promise to let him do things to all of us whenever he wanted to. Douglass lets him treat his head with cold water, which is just hard rubbing that he likes better than anything, every night before supper. I'm wearing a yarn string around my ankle now for rheumatism that I haven't got. In fact we are all 'on honor' with Lovey, to save the 'live stock,' as Uncle Pompey calls himself and the chickens."

Never having had any experience with little boys, I can't say positively that Lovelace Peyton is a wonder, but I firmly believe it and his honor is entirely grown up while he is not quite five. I've seen it work. If he says he will or he won't, he acts accordingly, no matter what happens to him or anybody else. But he is careful how he promises and he leaves himself plenty of room to carry on what he calls his practice, to the uneasiness of himself and all the neighbors. It cost Miss Prissy ten bottles, a pint of red paint, and a package of sulphur to buy the life of her gray cat for this year, but now she has no uneasiness about Tab at all.

I suppose if Roxanne and I sat down and talked one month straight through without eating and sleeping we might make up all the time we have lost out of each other's company, at least just skim the cream off each other's lives, but we'll never get to it. Too many people want Roxanne besides me, and I'm grateful to be allowed to be in the things she is in. I try to keep the other girls from feeling that I am in the way, and I don't believe they would feel that way at all if Belle didn't still keep prodding them up with her distrust of my money. I wish Belle just had a little wealth and would find out that it isn't anything at all and can be forgotten without the least trouble.

Mamie Sue wants to like me and the two silent Willises do, also, but Belle dusts my gold into their eyes so they can just blink at me so far. But the blinks get friendlier every day and I hope some shock will make them open their eyes to me like kittens do on the ninth day—and their hearts, too.

The tallest Willis gave me the first peony that bloomed on their bush to take to my mother, and I caught a sight of her awkward heart that did me good. I defied the nurse and told the white, white little thing on the pillow, that is all the mother I ever had, that one of my friends sent it to her, and I got a flash of a smile, such as I had never had before. The nurse said just that little bit of excitement made her worse, and I've promised never to do anything but take my daily look at her again—but—she is my mother, even if—

Well, anyway, Louise of leather, just as Roxanne and I had got the skirt ripped up and the pattern straightened out, we saw all the girls coming, and from the way they were talking we saw something interesting was surely happening, had happened, or was going to happen.

"Hide the gingham, Roxanne, while I slip over the wall and change my dress," I said quickly. "Our business arrangements are nobody else's business."

"Will you come right back?" asked Roxanne in a way that made me know she would worry if I didn't.

I would rather have stayed at home until the girls had had their visit and gone home, but I have thought out just how I ought to act about Roxanne and her friends and me. It is only fair to pay no attention to how they feel, but to do what makes Roxanne happy in case of the mix-up of us all. My pride and Roxanne's are different. Hers has been handed down for generations and she can act on it without argument with herself, but mine is my own kind and only I understand it. It is new and I have to plan it out by thinking. The girls all think that because I have finer clothes and travel and am rich, that I think I am better than they are and am proud of it. Richness is not my fault, any more than a hunched back would be, and it is my duty to forget it whether they do or not. I act accordingly.

Another thing: I believe something is making my father see the error of his ways and I hope that some day I will see him settled into being a good and great man just like Judge Luttrell and the Colonel are and Roxanne's father was. He has acted in a peculiar way just lately. Last night he drew me up close to him and stood by the window a long time without speaking.

"Phil," he finally said, not in the voice he generally uses as if he were speaking to his only son—but with a daughter tone in it—"you have made good in Byrdsville, and I want to tell you that I'm proud of you. I doubted whether you could do it. A bunch of such youngsters as you have made friends with would be a test for any man, much less a young woman. I'm their friend because they are yours, and pretty soon I am going to prove it—like the sentimental fools that all fathers of almost-grown daughters get to be. Go to bed, kiddie, and say an extra one for Father."

Now all this is directly connected with the state I found the girls in over at the Byrd cottage, when I finally dressed and got back again, after stopping to bargain with Lovelace Peyton to go without the four-o'clock cookies for half a tube of perfectly harmless tooth-paste that he wanted for some kind of plaster to put on Uncle Pompey's heel, which is always painful enough to occupy most of the snake-doctor's time.

"No, I don't see why we should always tell Phyllis every interesting thing that happens to us or is going to happen," Belle was saying in such a decided tone of voice that it carried through the front door, across the porch, and halfway down the front walk.

Disagreeability has a kind of force that knocks one down before pleasantness hardly gets to him. I knew Roxanne said something in answer to that; in my heart I knew, but I couldn't hear what it was with my ears.

"Well," came Mamie Sue's voice, muffled through a piece of fudge she always carries in her pocket, in case she goes a square away from home and is overtaken by her appetite. She always has enough for everybody else, too, I must not forget to add. "Well, if it is Miss Prissy's robber come back, that makes the boys act so, Phyllis might just as well be scared as the rest of us; and if it is something pleasant, why, let her have a share of that, too." Some day I'm going-to break loose from myself and hug Mamie Sue's funny fatness until she squeals.

"I don't believe that if it was just a frolic the boys would have got Douglass to come away from his work to the Crotch; but maybe he was going up-town anyway, and they knew that," said Roxanne as I came in the door and was given welcomes of different degrees. The tall Willis is getting so that she moves over for me to sit down by her, even if she is just sitting on one small chair. I wish she could know how that pleases me.

"Did the boys look to you as if the thing that is making them all act so important was nice or disagreeable, Phyllis?" asked Roxanne as she got out the inevitable darning bag.

The short Willis moved nearer and began to help sort and get ready for patching. I always keep a thimble in Roxanne's darning bag now, but sometimes the short girl beats me to it. The others never notice that Roxanne's hands are never empty of patching jobs. Still Mamie Sue does attentively feed her fudge in hunks while she darns.

"I don't know boys well enough to diagram their expressions," I answered. "They always look excited and queer to me, and I can't tell their jokes from their other affairs. What have they been doing?"

"Being as hateful and secret as they know how to be," answered Belle crossly. "Boys are nothing but rough, rude miseries; and the next time Tony Luttrell tells me to 'bubble along' as he did Mamie Sue and me, when Mamie Sue only wanted to stop him to give him a piece of fudge, I am going to tell him what I think of him."

"Hope I'll be there," said the tall Willis behind my shoulder, and I never enjoyed a silent remark more. Belle is as afraid of Tony's laugh as she is of a cow in the lane.

"Now I know that something awful has happened or is coming if Tony spoke that way," said Roxanne, with such anxiety coming into her face that the timid Willis dropped her stocking and Mamie Sue gulped down such a large piece of candy that she almost had to choke. "Oh, girls, do you suppose that dreadful man has got out of jail in the city and is coming back to maybe—maybe—?"

But the words were stopped in Roxanne's mouth with a great, pleasant laugh as the Idol stood in the door. You would know that "Idol" is the name for him by the way all the girls look awed and afraid of him, but interested too. Tony and Pink and Sam were in the background like the angels in the picture of Sir Galahad.

"This is an official committee to invite you to be the guests of Mr. William Forsythe on a hay-mooning on Friday next, to start from his home at the hour of seven-thirty, in honor of the birthday of his daughter, Miss Phyllis, who is quite as surprised as the rest of you. The rest of this speech will be continued on that evening." And he was gone before anybody got any breath again.

That's what my father meant by showing my friends that he appreciated them.

But Belle Kirby's expression would make anybody with a sense of humor laugh. Can live coals be showered on a person if nobody ever intended it?

CHAPTER V

The desire to be popular may be one of the unworthy ambitions of a person's heart, yet there is nothing in the world so delightful as having it happen to you. And if having almost everybody like you, and show it by being nice and friendly to you on all occasions, makes you happy your own self, how much more happy you are when somebody you love gets a slice of it all along with you!

My father is getting to be one of the beloved men of this town, like Judge Luttrell and the Colonel. It has been going on gradually for some time, but I was afraid to notice it for fear I was mistaken. Such is the result of the sincere prayers of a daughter, and I certainly was sincere in wanting this reform. And better than even his sitting and smoking and joking in the Judge's office and walking down the street in a friendly manner with Mr. Chadwell is the notice that Mr. Douglass Byrd has been taking of him lately. The Idol has been to see him twice, in the evening, and both times I have heard my father's jolly laugh boom out in a way the nurse says will have to stop, for it made Mother ask to see him and be ill because she couldn't. And just day before yesterday Father came up the street with the great inventor, and they both came in and sat with Roxanne and me on the cottage porch to smoke their cigars. Roxanne was just sweet and good and easy with Father like she always is. I don't believe that girl was ever conscious of her feet and hands and blushes In all her life. I forget mine when I am with her.

Well anyway, Father was delighted with her and showed it plainly. And if he liked her, he was positively funny when he met Lovelace Peyton. The snake-doctor came around the house, as usual galloping on the stick horse, and in one hand he had one of his best bottles full of something awful to look at and that smelled worse, even through the cork.

"Mister," he said, looking Father gravely and courteously in the face, "you got cholera bad and might die to-night if you don't take medicine quick. It's in this bottle; shake it well." And while the Idol made a grab for him he put that bottle right in Father's hand and backed off out of reach.

Roxanne was distressed at Father's having taken that awful smell into his hands, and Mr. Douglass tried to make him give it back to Lovelace Peyton; but Father wrapped it in two handkerchiefs and put it, smell and all, into his pocket.

"Thank you, Doctor Byrd," he said, just as gravely as he talks to the great surgeons and doctors that come to see Mother. "Shall I report my condition to you to-morrow?"

"That medicine will work fine," answered Lovelace Peyton; "but if it kills you, can I cut you open to see how you work inside? When Douglass dies, I'm going to cut him into little pieces; he's done promised."

"Oh, Lovey," was all Roxanne could say, while Father and the Idol both roared.

I never saw my father's face so lovely as it was when he looked down on that little raggedy boy as we left him swinging on the front gate. His heart is softening away from wealth to his fellow-man, I know. And, as if it had not made me happy enough to have Father sitting and smoking with such a great character as Mr. Douglass Byrd, what should happen but for us to meet Tony at our front gate, coming to see Father especially? They made me go in and wait on the front steps while they talked, because they didn't want me to hear; and they both laughed so that Father tried to get out his handkerchief and succeeded in dropping the awful bottle Lovelace had given him, while Tony leaned against the fence and shook with chuckles at Lovey's giving him such an awful smell. Oh, if they were to elect my father an honorary member of the Raccoon Patrol like the Colonel and the Idol, I could not stand the happiness. Tony's friendship for him gives me one of the deepest joys that ever came to me. Tony's high sense of honor cannot help but impress Father.

I never saw my father's face so lovely

I never saw my father's face so lovely

This little town of Byrdsville, that nestles down in a hollow of the Old Harpeth Hills on the old pioneer road they called the Road to Providence, when the first settlers traveled it from Virginia to Tennessee, is the most wonderful place in the world, I think, and I wish Father could have been born and reared here, for then he wouldn't have strayed into a career of making money. Nobody in Byrdsville ever did, and Mr. Douglass Byrd will be the first one. And besides having the soul of honor and loving-kindness in it, Byrdsville looks like it might be one of the outposts of heaven, where tired souls can come to rest before going up the shining ladder.

All the houses are old-fashioned, with wide doors for welcoming and with vines running over the chimneys and up to the eaves, while blooms and buds tumble over the walls and burst from the gardens into the street. Yes, I think Byrdsville might be called the smile-place on the old earth's round face.

But to return to Father and Tony at the front gate; only I didn't. Father went on down the street and Tony came in to sit on the steps and talk to me. I wouldn't be so frivolous and growny as to have a boy come sit on my front steps talking to me like a "suitor," as Belle thinks it is smart to have; but Tony is different. He's my friend, and I would almost as soon talk to him as Roxanne.

"Well, I must say, girliky, that it was mighty considerate of you to be born about the full moon time of the first of May," said Tony, with one of those funny flares of his eyes. "Suppose you had opened your peepers along in December; we would have had to have an apple-roasting to celebrate for you, and I, for one, prefer the hay-lark. Your parent is one fine old boy, and me for him."

"Oh, Tony, I am so glad you like Father, and it was fine of him to have the hay ride for me. Do you suppose they will all go?" When I said "all," I really meant Belle.

I don't know why, but somehow I hoped this hay ride would shake up Belle's heart into being soft toward me. There are just eleven of us in the junior class in the Byrd Academy: Tony and Pink and Sam and the two Logan boys, while Roxanne and Mamie Sue and Belle and the two Willises, with me, make up the girls. Eleven is a sacred number, and I don't like for Belle and me to break the link by not being friends.

Tony is such a wise boy that he sometimes knows what a girl is thinking about when she doesn't tell him. Most of the time he just grins and leads us all on and we do tell him everything; especially Mamie Sue, if we don't warn her beforehand and make her wear a horsehair ring not to forget when he asks her questions. It makes Belle mad for him to do Mamie Sue that way, and she calls it "prying"; but I think it is just kindness. How can you sympathize with your friends' affairs if you don't make them tell you all? And sympathy applied to life is like the gasoline in a motorcar, I think.

"Well, I should say they were all going," answered Tony enthusiastically. "Even Belle, the beauty, can hardly wait for the get-away. She is putting buttermilk on her freckles so that the moon won't see 'em. Miss Prissy is over at Roxanne's now, trying to baste Roxy together for the frolic."

"I think Roxanne always looks lovelier than anybody," I said quickly; for I didn't think I could bear to have even Tony, when I know what a great love he has for her, criticize Roxanne's shabbiness. They don't any of them know what a heroine she is, and about the great cause.

"Course she looks good, 'cause she is the pretty child; but I always feel like carrying a needle and thread and a card of pins when Roxy is along. And let me tell you the bug-doctor is about to burst out into the cold world from his aprons. I know old Doug makes enough to rag the family, but Roxy is just behindhand getting rabbit skins to wrap the buntings in. Lots of girls are poky about doing around."

If Tony Luttrell had known how cruel that sounded, it would have broken his heart. But I couldn't tell him what a heroine Roxanne is and I just had to shudder in my soul to see her so misunderstood—Roxanne, whose every day is just one big patch on life.

"It is lovely of Miss Priscilla to go with us," I said, to change the subject.

"It would be a dry hay ride if the Miss Bubble wasn't sitting in the very midst of the crowd and the wagon, with the Colonel prancing along beside on old White. Your father is going to ride out with the Colonel and—but that's the surprise. Being with your gingham gang so much, I am about to get the talks." And Tony put his hand over his mouth and moved away from me as if I had the scarlet fever.

I laughed at Tony and from sheer happiness at thinking that my father was going with us in the fine company of the Colonel and Miss Priscilla. I wonder what we would do, if we had to have somebody go to places with us who thought they had to chaperon us? Miss Prissy is just one of us and would go if we had to ask somebody like Belle's mother, for instance, who is always talking about chaperons, to go also.

As I have remarked before, Byrdsville is a very different place from most of the world, and I thank God that he led me to it and "made me to lie down in its green pastures, beside its still waters." I found that in the Bible the other night, and it fitted me and Byrdsville. Good-night, Louise!

Of course when I grow up I shall have many things happen to me, like graduating from Byrdsville Academy, marrying, and being president of clubs, and going to balls and theaters in the city, if I have to; but there will never be a night like this one of my sixteenth birthday, April twenty-second.

Miss Priscilla Talbot was the first slice out of the happiness birthday cake when we met down at her house to get into the wagon. I can never have things here at my home like that, because of the precious sick thing upstairs that cannot be disturbed, but who is the core of my heart, anyway, even if she doesn't know it.

But of all astonishing things, this is what Miss Priscilla did as we were all lined up for Father and the Colonel to help us into the wagon on the great mound of hay, to the front of which four horses were hitched.

"And now to start off the birthday we must each give Phyllis a kiss, as we would do if we were blowing out the candies on the cake that is packed in the basket; and each one whisper a wish to her, as they give her a kiss. I will be first and the Colonel next," she said and she bent down and kissed me and whispered: "A happy sixteenth year."

I never had been kissed—even Father never did it to me, because I have been more like a son than a daughter, and he hasn't thought of it. To get a whole wagonload of them at one time, and unaccustomed to them, was enough to paralyze any girl, and I stood dumb and took it—them, I mean. The blow-out-the-candle-with-a-kiss-wish is one of the first family birthday customs in Byrdsville, and I felt that it was right to subscribe to it. I didn't mind when I saw the boys were going to refuse firmly to do it and just shake hands instead.

"Bully for you, Bubble, and a pound or two to cover your elbows," Tony exploded while he nearly pumped my arm out of the socket. Everybody laughed, because I am getting thin with so much growing.

The Colonel's kiss was a ceremonial, like you have in church or at graduation day, and his wish took five minutes to say, but the tall Willis choked up my throat with the lump by whispering a hope for my mother, which can never be, I know.

Next the Idol kissed my hand with grace like is in a story-book and which made my whole arm act like a poker. Father hugged me with all the energy he hadn't been using on me all my life. It hurt me happily.

Roxanne came last and she saved hers until the Colonel had packed us down together in a nest of hay at Miss Priscilla's feet like two kittens in a basket, with Lovelace Peyton squirming around as a third.

"You never encouraged me to kiss you before, Phyllis," she whispered, with her arm around my neck; "but I'm going to whenever I want to after this, and here's a wish that we will never get separated farther than kissing distance, now that we have found each other."

Only Lovelace Peyton kept me from crying out loud like a baby from happiness. He burrowed between Roxanne and me in a search for some peppermint he smelled in the hay, and stuck one knee right into my mouth to stop the sob, which was a laugh when I removed the knee for it to get out. My first hug around Roxanne's waist was mighty awkward, but I know she understood.

After that the picnic unfolded its minutes in such a cloud of moonlight and rosy happiness, accompanied by song, that I don't know very well what really did happen. For once I felt that I was looking on life from the same exalted point of view that Roxanne always has, and I hope it will become a habit with me. Only I know it won't.

Tony's surprise, that he had got Father to help him about, was a hot-air balloon that the Scout book tells them how to make, and they sent one up from the place we stopped at, out on Providence Road, with "Phyllis," cut out in great big letters and lighted with a candle inside, which wobbled and set the whole thing on fire before it got much higher than the trees. Still, it did go up and it had my name on it! When I got off the train in Byrdsville two months ago I couldn't have believed in that balloon, if it had been revealed to me in a vision. Do I deserve it all?

One of the reasons of my rosy view was that the Idol rode upon the front seat of the wagon, with the farmer who drove, and smoked one of Father's cigars and led all the songs in the most marvelously beautiful voice I ever heard. He was on the Glee Club at Princeton, and of course to have him come to the party at all was a compliment. He helped Miss Priscilla and me unpack the suppers out on Tilting Rock, and acted only a little more grown-up than Tony and Pink, I don't know whether I quite liked to have him unbend so far as to throw a biscuit back at Tony. He is too great a man for that, and I was relieved when he took the Colonel's horse and started back to town, because he said he had something to attend to. It is more comfortable for me to have him on the pedestal I keep for him, than down in the ordinary walks of life with me and the rest of my friends—fine and unusual people as they all are. Also I am afraid I might betray in some way my great affection and veneration for him if we got too familiar over a pickle jar, and he might not like it. How do I know he wants to be enthroned and "idolized" in my heart?

Yes, I was glad to see him go home early before I got so light-headed with happiness as to squabble over pie with Pink and put a lightning-bug into Tony's lemonade glass. Father went with him, and how good it did seem to see them ride away together through the moonlight down Providence Road to Byrdsville, which lay in the dim distance with its lights making it my huge birthday cake, decorated with all the lilacs and roses and redbud abloom in the Harpeth Valley. Some people are so accustomed to happiness that they don't even notice it. I'm glad I haven't had that much.

One of the nice things about Miss Priscilla and the Colonel is that they go off and sit by themselves and entirely forget to ever say go home, until we have all had our fill of fun; then they begin to hurry at a terrible rate that gets up a pleasant excitement. They seem to know just the minute when we might begin to get tired, and they never let it come. Some people are geniuses about good times, and the Colonel and Miss Priscilla are two of that kind.

The ride home was almost the best of all. The boys sang and gave Raccoon calls and practised different kinds of wood signals and ate the things we had saved from supper, with Mamie Sue to keep them company, also Lovelace Peyton, who slept part of the time with his head on Tony's knees, but waked up if any stray refreshments threatened to get past him. We all hushed at the edge of town, for the Colonel said it was after midnight, and he unpacked each one at his or her own front door so softly that not even a dog barked. He put me out at the cottage because he didn't want to stop the wagon in front of our house on account of disturbing Mother, and I went in to unfasten Roxanne's dress and to get mine done likewise, then I could slip home through the garden, which is always so lovely with the moonlight making ghost flowers of Roxanne's ancestral blossoms.

I wish I didn't have to write you, leather Louise, what happened next, at the same time as the birthday, but I can't sleep unless I do. Would God be so cruel to me as to let me get just this one little taste of being happy and then take it away from me? I won't believe it!

This is what happened, set down in black and white, and I can draw no conclusions from it. I refuse! As Roxanne and I stood in the living hall, under the stern old Byrd grandmother, giggling and having a good, girl time like I have just been learning to do, suddenly the door opened and the Idol stood in the light we had lighted, with his face so pale I thought he was going to faint.

"Roxy," he said, not seeming to notice me, "you haven't been in my shed working with my bottles, have you? Or could Lovey have got in? I have the key and the window is barred, as I always keep it."

"Oh, no, Douglass, I haven't been near the shed this week. My key is here on the hook in the left-hand bookcase," and she reached behind her, took it, and showed it to him. "I know Lovey hasn't been there either, because we can trust him on honor. Oh, what is the matter?" As Roxanne asked the question she was trembling all over, but not in the deadly cold way I was, I felt sure. She couldn't have stood it and lived.

"Some one has been in the shed, taken samples of all my material, including the steel shavings that came from the last melting, and my notebook is gone. The process is stolen, Roxy, and all the sacrifices gone for nothing. I don't care for myself—but—you." His head was up in the same old portrait pose, but his arms trembled as he held them out to Roxanne.

I stood still and cold and never said one word, but a pain hit into my heart that I didn't know I was strong enough to stand and still live.

"When did you find it out?" I asked; and I was surprised at the cool note that sounded in my voice and made it like Father's when he talks business.

"Just now," he answered me over Roxanne's head that was buried on his shoulder. "I stopped down-town to help Judge Luttrell with a brief that he was writing and came home only a few minutes ago. The thief was in the shed between the time I went on the hay ride and now. I was in the shed just before I started."

I don't know how I said good-night to them; but I did the best I could, and came home through the moonlight with a great heaviness of heart and feet. I dreaded to see Father, and yet longed for him in a way I never did before in all my life. If anything awful is true, then he is more mine than ever. But it can't be! And when I looked for him I found him—in a way I never had before. He was standing at my mother's door and the great big man was crying just like a girl, with his shoulders shaking and big sobs coming.

"Bess, Bess," he sobbed Mother's name under his breath, "she's going to be a grown woman and I don't know what to do without you. Ten long years. Oh, Bess!"

Yes, I suppose I'm nearer a grown woman than most girls of my age, and I'm tall enough to take a big man in my arms, which are so long and thin as to be a joke, and hold him close enough to make the sobs stop coming.

"Now, Phil, I leave it to you if you are not enough to upset any man, with your moonlight picnics and folderols," Father said, in just a few seconds from the time I hugged him up. He was both laughing and sniffling into his handkerchief at the same time, and I had a lovely Lovelace Peyton feeling about him, because he looked so young and ashamed of himself for being caught crying.

"I'm just as much your son as I ever was, Father," I said with a gulp and a lump in my own throat. "I'm never going to be a daughter, if you don't want one."

"I do, Phyllis, I do; but I want the son-girl sometimes, too. You go to bed." And with a sound hug that nearly broke my ribs, as neither he nor I were used to them, he went into his room and shut his door decidedly.

CHAPTER VI

A serious disposition can make more trouble for itself by its own seriousness than all the misfortunes that come can make for it. If I had just a little touch of Roxanne Byrd's foamy spirits, I would be a much more comfortable companion for myself. All night I lay awake, anchored in the middle of the huge old Byrd bedstead, and sorrowed over the misfortune that had come to Roxanne and the Idol. Over and over I went in my mind to see where I could clear Mr. Rogers of my suspicions until my thoughts were so pale in color that I could hardly make them out, and at last I fell asleep in despair.

In the morning I dressed so slowly that it was nine o'clock before I was buttoned into my dress and felt that I could go over and help Roxanne bear the calamity. It was Saturday, so I knew she would need help in doing all the things she leaves undone until this blessed day of relief from school cares and responsibilities comes.

It is strange how ignorant one can be of the disposition of the very person she loves best on earth. Did I find Roxanne Byrd dissolved in an indigo sea on the day after she had lost a huge fortune? Not at all! She was floating still higher on a still more rosy cloud and eating a large slice of the most delicious nut cake, while Lovelace Peyton did likewise.

"Oh, Phyllis, I was just going to call you to get a piece of Uncle Pompey's nut cake before it gets cold. It is famous in Byrdsville, and I've been dying to have one made to give you ever since you came; only I couldn't get the materials. It takes every good thing in a grocery, from ginger to preserved cherries, to go in it, and it is best hot. Uncle Pompey said for me to wait until the second pan came out of the stove to call you, because it is always best. He has out the Sheffield tray with the old point cover on it and one of great-grandmother Byrd's willow plates to put it on for you. I'll let him bring it to you and see you taste it. Poor Uncle Pompey is a famous cook, and economy has been agony to him. I'm going to let him make every good thing he wants to this week. He has been held down so long." Roxanne bubbled along like a lovely mountain torrent of cheerfulness, while I stood rooted to the spot in an astonishment that I could not conceal.

"Oh, Roxanne," I said weakly, as I sank into a chair.

"Yes, Phyllis, I suppose it is funny to see me enjoying the cake like this after what happened last night; but the Byrds always make other plans as soon as anything happens to the first one. Douglass and I decided to rest from the steel invention by having things we want for two or three months, and then he knows something greater to invent than steel could ever be. He hasn't told me yet, but I'll tell you when he does. Oh, there's Uncle Pompey with the cake. It's lovely, isn't it, Phyllis?"

If a person went to a funeral and met the dead friend at the door handing her a piece of cake, I suppose she would feel about like I did when that funny old black man handed me that lovely and elegant tray with a grin on his face so wide that it is a wonder it didn't meet itself at the back of his head. I wonder to this moment where I got the enthusiasm with which I accepted it.

"Eat all you want to, Phyllis, 'cause I've got a good plaster to put on the place when the ache comes," Lovelace Peyton advised from his seat on the floor where he was alternately eating his piece of cake and rolling black pills from the crumbs that he caught in a pasteboard box.

And as I sat and munched that piece of historic Byrd cookery my brain turned over in my head and settled itself in a new way. My whole nature underwent a revolution. I saw that a person can either accept life as a piece of fluffy cake when it is handed to her or look on it all as—soggy. I'm going to follow Roxanne's example after this and see the fluffiness of the cake determinedly.

"And, Phyllis, I'll tell you what else I'm going to do," continued Roxanne, rocking and nibbling and smiling so that I would like to have eaten her up, from shabby shoes to the curl down the back of the neck. "When I went down to the grocery before breakfast to get the things to console Uncle Pompey after we had told him about the robbery, I saw the loveliest blue muslin in the window at Mr. Hadley's store, and I 'in going to buy it to-day and make me a dress for commencement. I had expected to wear the family linen, but Douglass says let's spend all his salary this month in having things we want; so the blue muslin will be my part. Do you think blue will be prettier than pink, or would you have—?"

But just here we were interrupted by Tony's appearance at the door, and the expression on his face matched the one I had had of condolence as I came over through the garden; but he has known Roxanne longer than I have and boys' minds are supposed to be stronger than girls'—privately I don't think they are—so he accepted the situation and the cake with more grace than I had.

However he was cruelly insistent about questioning and talking about the robbery. The Idol had told him about it as Tony walked out to the furnace with him, which is a Saturday habit with Tony as the Jonathan to Mr. Douglass. Tony had known all along about the steel, but was surprised to know that I had been able to keep it to myself. I suppose it is best never to notice an unconscious insult, and boys are often that way with girls.

"Doug and I both think that this is not the first time the robber has been in or around the shed," Tony said thoughtfully. "Do you remember that shadow we saw dodge through the yard the evening we came from the Raccoon outing, Phyllis?"

"Yes," I answered; and the uneasy feeling I had about Mr. Rogers that night so I couldn't sleep slightly tipped the rosy cloud I had decided to climb upon and stay upon forever. "But it may have been Uncle Pompey, like I thought it was," I added hopefully.

"Well, Doug told me to come and nose around and see what I could find in the way of clues. Want to come out and have a look with me? You two Palefaces might as well learn something about gumshoeing a villain now as ever."

Lots of boys, and grown-up people for that matter, like to keep interesting things and doings to themselves; but Tony Luttrell is as generous in disposition as he is in mouth.

We went out to the shed with him, and Lovelace Peyton went too, but refused to come in the shed door because he said he was still on honor to the Idol, no matter what Roxanne said, not to come nearer than one yard, which was marked with sticks all around the shed. It was funny to see the snake-doctor lean across the dead-line and crane his sweet little neck to try to hear and see Tony inside the shed. And after Tony had squinted at and touched and nosed almost every inch of the shed, he came out with his hands in his pockets.