Phyllis | Page 5

felt that you had so many friends out in the world,
where you have traveled, that you wouldn'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 couldn'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 haven't any friends in all the
world. We have traveled everywhere 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 Roxanne; 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 haven't
ever done anything to them? It makes me nervous to think about it, and
that combined with the secret and the accident that didn't happen to
Lovelace Peyton make my writing 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 Roxanne's grown
brother, Mr. Douglass Byrd, but I didn'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 because 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
Lovelace 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 isn'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 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 didn'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 experiments in. He keeps it locked up with a padlock, and has
commanded that nobody is to go even near the door. There is one big
bottle that has some kind of nitroglycerin 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 carefully 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