Phyllis | Page 6

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 Roxanne's ancestral flowers that it grieves me to think I have to
own them instead of her. I haven't been letting myself go down there
often, because I was afraid she would suspect 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 picking, 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 handkerchief, 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 Peyton, I began to shudder too.

He was hanging half in and half out of a little window 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 beginning 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 haven't got time to do them separately. The idea
came! I have had lots of teaching by different 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 Peyton; don't let it fall; it'll be good
for mixing 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 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 giving 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.
[Illustration: Then Roxanne and the bottle and I all collapsed on the
grass together]

Then Roxanne and the bottle and I all 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