xt72804xh43s https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt72804xh43s/data/mets.xml Daviess, Maria Thompson, 1872-1924. 1914  books b92-209-30909778 English Century, : New York : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Phyllis  / by Maria Thompson Daviess ; with illustrations by Percy D. Johnson. text Phyllis  / by Maria Thompson Daviess ; with illustrations by Percy D. Johnson. 1914 2002 true xt72804xh43s section xt72804xh43s 


















PHYLLIS

 This page in the original text is blank.

 This page in the original text is blank.


 

















































Down that garden path I flew

 








PfHlYLLIS


           BY
 MARIA THOMPSON DAVIESS
Author of "The Tinder Box," "The Melting
        of Molly," Etc.



With Illustrations by
PERCY D. JOHNSON



   NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
      1914



I

 































  COPYgIGHT, 1914, By
  THE CENTURY CO.

Publiihed, September, 19L1

 






















        TO
HELENA RUTH KETCHAM

 This page in the original text is blank.


 











     LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

                                             PACE
Down that garden path I flew     .  . Frontispioce
Then Roxanne and the bottle and I all collapsed
  on the grass together .  .  .   .  .  .  . 25
He stood there in the doorway and laughed until
  his big shoulders shook  .  .   .  .  .   . 85

I never saw my father's face so lovely  .  .  . 107
Tony . . . nosed almost every inch of the shed  135

He just moaned he was making an explosion  . 169
The Colonel handed me the medal .    .  .   . 243
"You stand right here and tell me how it all
  looks"   .  .  .   .  .  .   .  .  .  .   .273

 This page in the original text is blank.

 












PHYLLIS

 This page in the original text is blank.


 







       PHYLLIS

            CHAPTER I
    HE  country is so much larger than the
 Xcity and so empty that you rattle
 around in it until you wonder if you are ever
 going to get stuck to any place, especially
 if there is n't a house numbered anywhere.
 Our street is named Providence Road and
 the house Byrd Mansion and I am afraid
 I '11 never be at home there as long as I
 live. But the doctor says Mother has to
 live in the country for always, and I 'm only
 glad it is n't any countrier than Byrdsville.
 The worst thing about it to me is that this
 house I live in and the town I live in are
 named for the lovely dark-eyed girl who
lives down in the old-fashioned cottage that
backs up on our garden. She moved out for
me to move in, just because I am rich and
                  S

 


PHYLLIS



she is poor. I can't look at her straight, but
I love her so that I can hardly stand it. All
the other girls in school love her too, and
she is not at all afraid of the boys, but treats
them just as if they were human beings and
could be loved as such. That awful long-
legged Tony walks home with her almost
every day and they all laugh and have a good
time.
  I always wait until everybody has gone
down the street with everybody else so they
won't see how lonesome I am. Crowded
lonesomeness is the worst of all. There are
many nice boys and girls just about my age
here in Byrdsville; but they can never like
me. I 'm glad I found it out before I tried
to be friends with any of them. The first
day I came to the Byrd Academy I heard
Belle tell Mamie Sue how to treat me, and
that is what settled me into this alone state.
  "Of course, be polite to her, Mamie Sue,"
Belle said, not knowing that I was behind the
hat-rack, pinning on my hat. "But there
never was a millionaire in Byrdsville before,
                    4

 



PHYLLIS



and I don't see how a girl who is that rich
can be really nice. The Bible says that it
is harder for a rich man to get to heaven
than for a knitting-needle to stick into a
camel, because he and it are blunt, I suppose;
and it must be just the same with such a
rich girl. Poor child, I am so sorry for her;
but we must be very careful."
  "Why, Belle," said Mamie Sue, in a voice
that is always so comfortable because she is
nice and fat, "Roxy said she was going to
like her a lot, and she 's got Roxy's lovely
house while Roxy has to live in the cottage,
which is just as bad as moving into a chicken
coop after the Byrd Mansion. If Roxy
likes her, it seems to me we might. She
did n't turn us out of house and home, as
the almanac says."
  "Don't you see that Roxy has to be nice
to her, because if she is n't we will think it
is spite about the house Roxy can't show
her resentment, but her friends can. I 'm a
friend."
  Belle uses words and talks like a grown
                    5

 


              PHYLLIS
person in a really wonderful way. She is
the smartest girl in the rhetoric class and, of
course, she knows more than most people,
and Mamie Sue realizes that. So do I. I
saw just how they all felt about me, and I
don't blame them-but I just wish every
time Roxanne Byrd smiles at me that I
did n't have to make myself stop and remem-
ber that she does it because she has to.
  "But I believe Phyllis is a nice girl,"
Mamie Sue said. Mamie Sue reminds me
of a nice, fat molasses drop, with her yellow
hair and always a brown dress on.
  "The city is an awful wicked place,
Mamie Sue, even if it is only just a hundred
miles away. Let's don't think about the
poor thing." Belle answered positively,
and they went out of the door.
  I wanted to sit down and cry as I feel
sure any girl has a right to do; only I never
have learned how to do it. Crying with
only a governess to listen to and reprove a
person is no good at all; only mothers can
make crying any comfort, and mine is too
                   6

 


PHYLLIS



feeble to let me do anything but tiptoe in
and hold her hand while the nurse watches
me and the clock to send me out. Fathers
just stiffen girls' backbones instead of en-
couraging wet eyelashes-at least that is the
way mine affects me.
  No, I didn't sit down and cry when I
found out that I was n't to have any friends
in Byrdsville for the just cause of being too
rich, but I stiffened my mind to bear it as
a rich man's daughter ought to bear her
father's mistakes in conduct.
  What made me know that the girls had
the right view of the question was what I had
found out about it for myself this spring
from reading magazines, and I have been
distressed and uneasy about Father ever
since. His own cousin, Gilmore Lewis, who
is a fine man, as everybody knows and as is
often published, runs one of the greatest
weekly magazines in New York, and he put
a piece in it that would have proved to a
child in the second reader how wicked it is
to be millionaire men. Father's name was
                    7

 


              PHYLLIS
not mentioned, but many of his friends'
were, and of course I knew that it was just
courtesy of his Cousin Gilmore to leave it
out.
  I know it is all wrong, with so many poor
people and starvation at every hand. I see
that! But in spite of his terrible habit of
making money I love and trust my father
and expect to keep on doing it. He under-
stands me as well as a man can understand
a girl, and he is regardful for me always.
He looked at me for a long time one night
a week before he moved down here in this
Harpeth Valley, where the air is to keep
Mother a little longer for us to know she's
here even if we can't always see her every
day, and then he said:
  "Phil, old girl, I 'm not going to take
Miss Rogers with us to go on with your soli-
tary brand of education. There is a little
one-horse school in Byrdsville that they call
the Byrd Academy, and I watched a bunch
of real human boys and girls go in the gate
the morning I got there. I think you will
                   8

 


              PHYLLIS
have to be one of them. I want to see a few
hayseeds sprinkled over your very polished
surface."
  I laughed with him. That is the good
thing about Father: you can always laugh
with him, even if you are not sure what you
are laughing about. Laughing at a person
is just as rude as eating an apple right in
his face. Father always divides his apple.
Though rich, he is a really noble man.
  But although I did n't cry when I heard
Belle talking a course of righteous action
into fat Mamie Sue about me, I made up
my mind that I would have to have some sort
of person to talk to, so I bought this book.
I am going to call it "Louise" and do as
good a stunt of pretending that it has got
brown hair and blue eyes and a real heart as
I can. All I have written up to now has
just been introducing myself to Louise.
Our real adventures and conversations will
come later.
  Before I have gone to bed all this week
I have been taking a peep out of my win-
                   9

 


PHYLLIS



dow down over the back garden to Roxanne
Byrd's cottage and asking her in my heart
to forgive me for taking her home, and ask-
ing God to make her love the cottage as I
would like to be let to love her. To think
that I have to sleep in her great-grand-
mother's four-poster bed that Roxanne
has always slept in! I have to pray hard
to be forgiven for it and to be able to en-
dure the doing of it. Good-night!
  This has been a very curious and happy
kind of day, Louise, and I feel excited and
queer. I have had a long talk with Rox-
anne Byrd over our garden fence, and she
is just as wonderful as I thought she was
going to be. A person's dream about an-
other person is so apt to be a kind of misfit,
but Roxanne slipped into mine about her
just as if it had been made for her.
  The little Byrd boy is named Lovelace
Peyton for his two grandfathers, and he
looks and sounds just like he had come out
of a beautiful book; but he does n't act ac-
cordingly. He is slim and rosy and dimply,
                   10

 


              PHYLLIS
with yellow curls just mopped all over his
head, and he has blue eves the color that the
sky is hardly ever; but from what Roxanne
says about him I hardly see how he will live
to grow up. He falls in and sits in and
down and on and breaks and eats things in
the most terrible fashion, and he has all sorts
of creeps and crawls in his pocket all of the
time. He pulls bugs and worms apart and
tries to put them together again; and he
choked the old rooster nearly to death trying
to poke down his throat some bread and
mud made up into pills.
  That is what I ran to help Roxanne about,
and the poor old chicken was gaping and
gasping terribly. I held him while she
made Lovelace Peyton put his finger down
in the bill and pull up the wad he had been
trying to push down.
  "That old rooster have got rheumatic,
Roxy, and now he'll die with no pill for
it," said Lovelace, as he worked his dirty
little finger down after the mud and bread;
but he got it out and the poor old chicken
                    11

 


PHYLLIS



hopped off with all his feathers ruffled up
and stretching his neck as if to try it.
  "Oh, Lovey, please don't kill the chick-
ens," Roxanne said in a tone of real plead-
ing.
  "I don't never kill nothing, Roxy," he an-
swered indignantly. "If a thing can't get
well from me doctoring it, it dies 'cause it
wants to. Since Uncle Pomp let me put
that mixtry of nice mud and brick dust on
his shoe he don't suffer with his frost-bit heel
no more. He 's going to stop limping next
week if I put it on every day. I 'm going
to pound another piece of brick right now,"
and he went around the house with the dar-
lingest little lope, because he always rides
a stick horse, which prances most of the
time.
  "Oh, is n't he awful" said Roxanne; but
there was the kind of pride in her voice and
the kind of look in her eyes that I would
have if I had a little brother like that, even
if he was so dirty that he would have to be
handled with tongs.
                   12

 


PHYLLIS



  "He 's so awful I wish he was mine," I
answered, and then we both laughed.
  I had never thought, leather Louise, that
I would have a nice laugh like that with a
girl who was only treating me kindly to keep
from the sin of spite. It was hard to be-
lieve that Roxanne did n't really like me
when she went on to tell me some of the
dreadful funny things Lovelace Peyton does
almost every hour. I forgot about her feel-
ing for me and was laughing at her descrip-
tion of how she came home from school one
day and found old Uncle Pompey, who is
as black and old as a human being can be
and is all the servant Roxanne has to help
her, cooking dinner with a piece of news-
paper pasted in strips all over his face, which
was Lovelace Peyton's remedy for neu-
ralgia.
  But just as I was enjoying myself so as
to be almost unconscious I saw Belle and
MNlamie Sue and Tony Luttrell coming
around the corner of the street past the front
gate of Byrd Mansion and down toward the
                   1i

 


PHYLLIS



cottage. Nobody knows how hard it is for
me to see every nice body my own age pass
right by my gate in a procession to see Rox-
anne when I can't go, too.
  Tony did n't see me standing by the gar-
den fence, and he gave the funny little
whistle that he calls the Raccoon whistle for
the Palefaces and which he always whistles
when he wants to signal something to one
of the girls. Then suddenly they all saw
me, and that politely enduring look came
over all three faces at once, though MIamie
Sue's face is so jolly and round by nature
that it is very hard to prim it down suddenly,
and I don't believe she would always trou-
ble to put it on for me, only Belle seems to
demand it of her as an echo of her senti-
ments toward me. Some people can't seem
to be sure of themselves unless they can get
somebody else to echo them and I think that
is why Belle has to keep poor M1amie Sue
at her elbow all the time.
  But when I saw the politeness plaster
spread itself over all their faces at the sight
                   14

 


               PHYLLIS
of me enjoying myself like any other girl,
I just turned away wearily and started back
along my own garden path, back to my own
house which I felt that I ought not to be
living in. But something sweet happened
to me before I left that makes me feel nice
and warm even now to think about.
  "Please don't go away, Phyllis," said
Roxanne, looking right into my face with
such a lovely look in her own eyes that it
was almost impossible, for an instant, for me
to believe it was charity.
  For a moment I wanted to stay, and al-
most did; but if she could be generous, so
could I, and I did n't intend to spoil their
fun for even a minute, so I just smiled at
her and bowed to them as I walked away.
  Nobody knows how it does hurt me to
be this kind of an outcast! I have lived
fifteen years with a sick mother, and a
governess and trained nurses, and never a
chance of having friends; and now that one
is just at my back door I can't have her be-
cause useless wealth is between us. Is
                   15

 


              PHYLLIS
there no way the rich can turn poor with-
out disgrace But I 've got that smile
from Roxanne and I 'm going to believe it
was meant for the real me. Good-night!

  I 'm so full of happiness and scare and a
secret that if I did n't have this little book to
spill some of it out to I don't know what I
would do. A secret sometimes makes a girl
feel like she would explode worse than a
bottle of nitroglycerin, though it makes me
nervous even to write the word when I think
of what might have happened to Lovelace
Peyton if I had n't had a father who is cool
enough to keep his head at all times and
handed that quality down to me.
  Tony Luttrell is the leader of the Raccoon
Patrol of the Boy Scouts, and he has a star
for pulling Pink Chadwell out of the swim-
ming-pool one day last summer when Pink
had eaten too many green apples and the
cold water gave him cramps. Tony had to
hit him on the head to keep them both from
being drowned. It was a grand thing for
                   16

 


               PHYLLIS
him to do, and everybody in this town looks
up to Tony as a hero. Roxanne says the
thing that hurts her most is that she can't
tell all the boys and girls how brave I am be-
cause of the secret which I had to find out
when I saved the life of Lovelace Peyton.
  "Oh, Phyllis, to think they can't all know
what a noble girl you are to risk your life,
when you knew it, to get Lovey out for me,"
Roxanne said, after we had locked things
up and got Lovelace to promise never to go
near that window again and were sitting on
the little back porch of the cottage trembling
with fear and being very happy together.
  "I don't care what they think about me,
Roxanne, j ust so you will be my friend
sometimes in private when the others are
not around," I said, in a voice that wanted
to tremble, but I would n't let it.
  "Do you think I would do a thing like
that, Phyllis-be a girl's friend in private"
Roxanne asked, and her head went up into
a stiff-necked pose like that portrait of her
great-grandmother Byrd that looks so
                   17

 


PHYLLIS



haughtily out of place hanging over the fire-
place in the living hall in the little old cot-
tage, in spite of the room full of old ma-
hogany furniture and silver candlesticks
brought from Byrd Mansion to keep her
company. "I'm going to be your friend
all the time, and it is none of the others' busi-
ness. I have always wanted to be, but you
were so stiff with me; and Belle said she
felt that you had so many friends out in the
world, where you have traveled, that you
would n't want us."
  If I had answered what I wanted to about
Belle Kirby, I should have been very much
ashamed by this time. Like a flash it came
over me that it would be a poor way to begin
being friends with Roxanne to make her see
what a freak one of her best friends was,
so I held the explosion back.
  "She was mistaken, Roxanne," I said;
and I could n't help being a little sad as I
spoke the truth out to her, for I am fifteen
years old, and fifteen are a good many years
to live lonely. "I have n't any friends in
                   18

 



              PHYLLIS
all the world. We have traveled every-
where trying to get mother well, but I 've
had no chance to make friends. This is the
first time a girl ever talked to me in my
life, and I never did talk to a boy-and I
never want to."
  "Oh, Phyllis, how dreadful!" said Rox-
anne; and she gave me such a hug around
the neck that it hurt awfully, only I liked
it. It did feel funny to have somebody
sniffing tears of sympathy against your
cheek, and I didn't know exactly what to
do. Petting has to be learned by degrees
and you can't come to it suddenly. But I
was happy.
  And I'm happier to-night than I ever
was in my life, only still scared quite a little,
too. I wonder how the boys and girls are
going to like Roxanne's being friends with
me. How can they hate me if I have n't
ever done anything to them It makes me
nervous to think about it, and that combined
with the secret and the accident that did n't
happen to Lovelace Peyton make my writ-
                   19

 


PHYLLIS



ing so shaky that I may never be able to
read it.
  This is the accident and the secret. Of
course, I knew that there never was such
a glorious person born in the world as Rox-
anne's grown brother, Mr. Douglass Byrd,
but I did n't know what kind of a genius he
was. It was something of a shock to find
out, for I felt sure he was a wonderful poet
that the world was waiting to hear sing
forth. That is what he looks like. He 's
tall and slim except his shoulders, which are
almost as broad as father's, and his eyes are
the night-sky kind that seem to shine be-
cause they can't help it. His smile is as
sweet as Roxanne's, only the saddest I ever
saw; and his hair mops in curls like Love-
lace Peyton's, only it is black, and he won't
let it. This description could fit a great
artist or a novelist or an orator, but he is n't
even any of these; he 's an inventor.
  The invention has something to do with
the pig iron out at the Cumberland Iron
Furnaces that father owns in the Harpeth
                   20

 


              PHYLLIS
Valley, and Mr. Douglass works for him.
It turns it into steel sooner than anybody
else has ever discovered how to do it before,
and it is such a wonderful invention that it
will make so much money for him and his
family that they won't know what to do with
it. Roxanne is going to tell me more about
it to-morrow.
  I did n't say anything to keep Roxanne
from being happy over her brother getting
all that money, but it made me sad. The
more money you get the less happiness there
seems to be on the market to buy. All
Father's dollars couldn't have bought me
even one of those hugs around the neck from
Roxanne-I had to risk my life to get them.
And that's where Lovelace Peyton and his
badness come in. I'm catching my breath
as I think about it.
  Mr. Douglass has a little shed down in the
cottage garden boxed off to make his ex-
periments in. He keeps it locked up with
a padlock, and has commanded that nobody
is to go even near the door. There is one
                   21

 


PHYLLI S



big bottle that has some kind of nitro-
glycerin mixture in it that is going to blow
the iron into steel while it is hot, he hopes.
Roxanne knows it because he showed it to
her, and he told her if the cottage ever got
on fire to run and get it and carry it care-
fully away first before it could blow up the
town. It must never be jolted in any way.
She has a key to the shed that she guards
sacredly.
  If there is one thing in the world that
Lovelace Peyton wants worse than any
other, it is bottles. He takes every one he
can find and just begs for more. He has a
place down by the garden wall, behind a
chicken coop, where he makes his mixtures
and keeps all the bottles. He 's going to be
a famous surgeon and doctor some day if
he lives, which I now think is doubtful.
  I was down in my garden on the other
side of the wall from him picking some
leaves off the lavender bushes Roxanne's
great-grandmother had planted in that
lovely old garden, which is so full of Rox-
                   22

 


PHYLLIS



anne's ancestral flowers that it grieves me to
think I have to own them instead of her. I
have n't been letting myself go down there
often, because I was afraid she would sus-
pect how much I wanted her to come out and
talk to me like she did the day of Lovelace
Peyton's rooster excitement; but sometimes
I think my dignity ought to let me go and
pick just a little of the lavender, and I go.
I went this afternoon, and I believe God
sent me and so does Roxanne.
  Suddenly, as I bent over the bushes pick-
ing, I heard a wail in Roxanne's sweet voice
and I looked up quick. There she stood in
the back door, as white as a pocket handker-
chief, shuddering and pointing to me to look
down at the end of the garden right near
me.
  "Oh, Phyllis," she chattered through her
shaking teeth just so I could hear it, "if he
drops that big bottle, the whole town will
be blown to pieces. How can we save it and
him "
  And when I looked and saw Lovelace
                   23

 


PHYLLIS



Peyton, I began to shudder too. He was
hanging half in and half out of a little win-
dow high up in the shed like a skylight, and
the big bottle was slowly slipping as he tried
to wriggle either in or out. There was no
ladder in sight, and neither of us was near
tall enough to reach him. He was begin-
ning to whimper and be scared himself, and
I could see the heavy bottle start to slip
faster from his arm. We had less than a
second to lose. I thought and prayed both
at the same time, which I find is a good thing
to do in such times of danger. You have n't
got time to do them separately. The idea
came! I have had lots of teaching by dif-
ferent gymnasium teachers wherever we
happened to live for a few months, and I 'm
as strong as most boys. I know how to do
things with myself like boys do.
  "Hold your bottle tight, Lovelace Pey-
ton; don't let it fall; it 'll be good for mix-
ing in and I can get you loose," I called as
I scrambled over the wall and met Roxanne
just under the window. I saw him hug it
                    24


 




















































Then Roxanne and the Lottle and I all collapsed1 oel the grass
                           together

 This page in the original text is blank.

 


              PHYLLIS
up tight again as he stopped squirming.
  "Quick, Roxanne, step on my shoulder,"
I told her; and I bent down and held up my
hand to her.
  "Oh, can you hold me up, Phyllis" she
gasped; but she put her foot on my right
shoulder and, leaning against the wall, I
pulled myself up little by little, holding her
hand while she clung to the wall to balance
herself.
  "Keep still, Lovey, just a minute longer,"
she said shakily. "Just an inch more,
Phyllis," she whispered to me; and, though
I was almost strained to death, I stretched
another inch. Then I heard her give a sob
and I knew she had the bottle.
  But even if she did have the bottle we had
to get it down without a jar, and I was giv-
ing way in every bone in my body. But
I thought of Napoleon Bonaparte and Gen.
Robert E. Lee and braced a minute longer
as Roxanne climbed down over me with that
horrible bottle in her arms.
  Then Roxanne and the bottle and I all
                   27

 


              PHYLLIS
collapsed on the grass together; and if we
had known how, I think the poetic thing for
us to have done was to have fainted. But
we did know how to giggle and shake at the
same time, and that is what we did until
Lovelace Peyton howled so loud we had to
begin to get him down. And the getting
him loose took us a nice long time that was
very good for him. We had to get the key
and unlock the shed and get a table and a
chair on both the inside and outside, and
Roxanne pushed while I pulled. We tore
him and his clothes both a great deal, but at
last we landed him. Then Roxanne put
him to bed to punish him and to mend his
dress at the same time. That was when she
told me the great secret that it is hurting me
to keep, because it has got my Father mixed
up in it in a sort of conspiracy like you read
about in books. I don't dare write it even
to you, leather Louise.



28


 










CHAPTER II



CHANGING a lifelong principle is al-
     most as difficult as wearing new shoes
that don't exactly fit you, and it makes you
feel just as awkward and limp in mind as the
shoes do in feet. Still I believe in adopting
new ideas. I have never liked the appear-
ance of boys, and I never supposed that
when you knew one it would be a pleasant
experience; but in the case of Tony Luttrell
it is, and in the case of Pink Chadwell it is
almost so.
  I don't know what Roxanne said to them
all to explain her relations of friendship with
the heathen-myself-but it was funny to
see how they tried to please her by seeming
to like me, only Tony did n't seem. He of-
fered me himself as a friend along with all
the bites I cared to take off the other side of
                   29

 


              PHYLLIS
a huge apple he was eating. I took the
bites and Tony at the same time with fear
and trembling, but my confidence in him
grows every day. It grows in Pink, also,
only much more slowly.
  Tony is long-legged and colty looking,
with such a wide mouth and laughing kind
of eyes that the corners of your own mouth
go up when you look at him, and he raises
a giggle in your inside by just a funny kind
of flare his eyes have got; but Pink Chad-
well is different. Poor Pink is so hand-
some that he is pitiful about it. He carries
a bottle of water in his pocket to keep the
curl of his front hair sopped out, but he can't
keep his lovely skin from having those pink
cheeks. Tony calls him "Rosebud" when
he sees that he has got used to hearing him-
self called "Pinkie" and is a little happy.
  The surprise to me was that the boys were
so much nicer to me than the girls when
Roxanne adopted me; but then it didn't
make so much difference to them. The
girls are always together in all of the im-
                   so

 


PHYLLIS



portant things of their lives, while most of
the time the boys just forget all about us,
unless they need us for something or we
get ahead of them in class.
  "I 'm so glad that you are going to stay
and have lunch with us to-day," Belle said
to me the first time I let Roxanne beg me
into bringing my lunch instead of going
home for it, as I had been doing every day to
keep from seeming to be so alone, eating all
by myself while they had spread theirs all
together out on the side porch or even out
on the big flat stone when it was warm
enough. "When Roxy wanted to invite
you, I felt sure you would n't come."
  Some people have a way of freezing up all
the pleasure that they can get close enough
to talk over. Belle is that kind. She made
me so uncomfortable that I was about to do
some freezing on my own account when
Mamie Sue lumbered into the conversation
in such a nice, friendly way that I laughed
instead.
  "I hope you brought a lot of food, for I 'm
                   81

 


PHYLLIS



good and hungry to-day," she said. "I ate
so many biscuits for breakfast that I left
myself only five to bring for lunch. Our
cook makes the same number every day and I
just see-saw my lunch and breakfast in a
very uncomfortable way. So many bis-
cuits for breakfast, so few for lunch !" That
jolly, plump laugh of Mamie Sue's is going
to save some kind of a serious situation yet,
friend leather Louise.
  If you are the kind of person that has
dumb love for your friends, you see more
about them than folks who can express
themselves on the sacred subject. That
lunch party with those five jolly girls out in
the side yard of the Byrd Academy gave me
a funny, uneasy feeling, and I now know the
reason. Roxanne Byrd brought one small
apple, two very thin biscuits, and some
cracked hickory nuts. She carefully ate
less than she brought. Something took my
appetite when I saw her eat so little, and
there was a quantity of food left for some-
body to consume, and 8he hungry. I was
                   32

 


PHYLLIS



afraid we 'd have to send for a doctor for
AMamie Sue after she had cleared my large
napkin we spread to put it all on. The
Jamison biscuits are cut on the same plump
pattern that Mamie Sue is and all my sand-
wiches were good and thick.
  But when Roxanne did n't eat I suffered.
One of the most awful situations in life is to
have one of your friends be the sort of girl
that has a town named after her and won-
derful family portraits and such dainty
hands and feet that shabby shoes don't even
count, and then to know that she is hungry
most of the time from being too poor to get
enough food. For two days I have had to
keep my mind off Roxanne Byrd to make
myself swallow one single morsel of any-
thing to eat. I suspected it at the school
lunch but I was certain of it from the way
Lovelace Peyton consumed the first cooky
I offered him over the fence. Thank good-
ness, he has no family pride located in his
stomach, and when my feelings overcome
me he is the outlet. I can feed him any-
                   33

 


PHYLLIS



thing at all hours and he is always ready for
more. It may be wrong to keep it from
his sister when I know how she feels about it,
but I can't help that. I have to fill him up.
His legs look too empty for me.
  But, to do Lovelace Peyton justice, he
has got his own kind of pride, and I under-
stand it better than I do Roxanne's.
  "For these nice eatings, I '11 cut a cat open
for nothing and let you see inside what
makes him go, if you get the cat," he of-
fered, after he had eaten two slices of
buttered bread and the breast of half a
chicken out behind one of the lilac bushes
in his ancestral garden that is now
mine.
  Now, I call that a fair proposition, con-
sidering the circumstances, and I wish I
could make Roxanne be as sensible in spirit.
But I can't. Family pride is a terrible
thing, like lunacy or hysterics when a person
gets it bad.
  However, I decided to talk to Roxanne
about her financial situation, and I began as
                   34

 


PHYLLIS



far off from the subject as I could, so as to
approach it with caution.
  I made a start with a compliment. A
sincere compliment is a good way to start
being disagreeable to a person for her own
benefit.
  "Roxanne," I said, with decided palpita-
tion in my heart that I kept out of my voice,
"you did n't know, did you, that you are
one fifteen-year-old wonder, done up in a
feminine edition with curls and dark eyes
How do you manage it all"
  "I'm not, and I don't," answered Rox-
anne with a laugh as she drew a long needle
across a mammoth darn she was making on
the knee of a stocking which was quite as
small as the darn was large. "I don't man-
age at all; everybody will tell you so. Miss
Prissy Talbot say