Phyllis | Page 7

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.

CHAPTER II
Changing a lifelong principle is almost 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 appearance 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 didn't seem. He
offered me himself as a friend along with all the bites I cared to take off
the other side of 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 Chadwell is different. Poor
Pink is so handsome 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 himself
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 important
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 wouldn'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 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
biscuits 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 somebody to consume, and she
hungry. I was afraid we'd have to send for a doctor for Mamie 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 sandwiches were good and thick.
But when