Phyllis | Page 9

does and speak of Him when I
want to and write about Him to you, Louise, just as I do about all of the
other interesting inhabitants of Byrdsville.
"Oh," laughed Roxanne, as she snipped a thread and began to
cross-stitch the mammoth cavern, never dreaming of the momentous
resolve she was interrupting in my heart, "it is not so bad this year,
because Lovey has got so nice and steady on his feet and doesn't put
things in his mouth any more. Now he is so busy hunting and doctoring
his 'squirms' as he calls them, that I have lots of free time to mend and
darn and work. Of course, it is hard to have him keep them in his apron
pocket and always carrying them in his hand when he hasn't a bottle
that smells bad to carry. Just yesterday he brought a queer kind of--Oh,
what do you suppose he has found now?"
And with the fear and trembling that all girls have the right to feel of
"squirms" both Roxanne and I sat petrified while Lovelace Peyton
came around the house at full gallop and drew up in front of us on the
brick walk. His face was streaked with mud, and in one hand he held an
old tomato can and in another a dangerous-looking pointed stick.
Lovelace Peyton is freckled and snub-nosed and patched in various
unexpected places and his eyes were sweet like Roxanne's as they
flared with excitement when he paused for breath before he unfolded
his tale of the adventure from which he had just arrived.
"Guess what crawl I have founded now, Roxy?" he demanded with
confidence that sympathy would be extended him over his
good-fortune.
"I can't guess, Lovey, but please don't let it out," answered Roxanne

with the expected sympathy slightly tinged with entreaty in her voice. I
moved down one step so as to be nearer the capture, for Lovelace
Peyton's enthusiasm was contagious.
"It's a chicken sk-snake," he proclaimed proudly; and while both
Roxanne and I tucked our feet up under our skirts and squealed, he
drew with triumph a very fat, red fishing-worm out of the can and
displayed it, hanging across one of his chubby fingers. "It's a lovely
chicken-eating sk-snake," he said with breathless admiration.
"Y-e-s," I said doubtfully. "But it couldn't eat a chicken very well,
could it, Lovelace Peyton?" I asked politely, with my doubts of the
helpless red string hanging on his finger well under control. Roxanne
had gone back to her darning with relief plainly written all over her
face.
"This sk-snake could eat up five chickens or maybe more if you give
him time," defended his captor warmly.
"It--it looks rather small to be so savage, Lovey," argued Roxanne
mildly as she went on darning.
"It's sick some--wait till I put it in pepper tea," said Lovelace Peyton as
he lifted the worm.
"Ask Uncle Pomp what he thinks," advised Roxanne, hoping to get rid
of the squirm.
"I bet Uncle Pomp will be skeered to death of him," answered the
proud hunter as he took his departure around the house.
"Oh," sighed Roxy, "some day he will find a real snake and then what
will I do?"
"That is just what I was talking about, Roxanne," I said, returning to
my subject, which is the way my slow, methodical mind works in direct
contrast to Roxanne's way of forgetting one thing because of
enthusiastic interest in the next. "I don't see how you attend to all of

this, this--" I paused to find a name for Roxanne's tumultuous
household.
"Menagerie," Roxanne suggested, with a laugh that floated out over the
bed of ragged red chrysanthemums as sweet and clear as the note of the
cardinal in the tall elm by the gate.
"It's how you get your lessons and stay high up in your class I don't
understand," I answered, still using my compliment tactics. "I've only
known you less than a month, so it might be just luck that you got first
mention for your character sketch of Hawthorne in the rhetoric class;
but Tony says you always get it. You recite your German poems like
they were English, and you feel them as much as you do Cassabianca.
When do you study?"
"Never," answered Roxy with a ruthful smile; "but, Phyllis, in school I
listen. I have to. Just school hours are all I have; but I learn lessons
while they are being recited, and write exercises and things in that one
free hour I have at ten o'clock. If nothing like mumps or
whooping-cough happens to Lovey this winter or next, I believe I will
be ready to go to college with you and Belle and Mamie Sue and Tony
and Pink. I've asked Miss