Maria Thompson Daviess

“ Lovelace Peyton is not going to die from his dreadful burns, the doctors say; but as yet they can't tell about his eyes. They don't dare remove the bandages, and whether or not he can see cannot be decided for a week or more. He has to stay in a dark room and be very quiet, and it is like trying to prove that impossible is possible to persuade him into lying in his bed in Roxanne's room, while we exert ourselves to the point of desperation to keep him happy and amused. ”

“ Yes, I was glad to see him go home early before I got so light-headed with happiness as to squabble over pie with Pink and put a lightning-bug into Tony's lemonade glass. Father went with him, and how good it did seem to see them ride away together through the moonlight down Providence Road to Byrdsville, which lay in the dim distance with its lights making it my huge birthday cake, decorated with all the lilacs and roses and redbud abloom in the Harpeth Valley. Some people are so accustomed to happiness that they don't even notice it. ”

“ What have they been doing?"
"Being as hateful and secret as they know how to be," answered Belle crossly. "Boys are nothing but rough, rude miseries; and the next time Tony Luttrell tells me to 'bubble along' as he did Mamie Sue and me, when Mamie Sue only wanted to stop him to give him a piece of fudge, I am going to tell him what I think of him."
"Hope I'll be there," said the tall Willis behind my shoulder, and I never enjoyed a silent remark more. Belle is as afraid of Tony's laugh as she is of a cow in the lane. ”

“ Douglass Byrd will be the first one. And besides having the soul of honor and loving-kindness in it, Byrdsville looks like it might be one of the outposts of heaven, where tired souls can come to rest before going up the shining ladder.
All the houses are old-fashioned, with wide doors for welcoming and with vines running over the chimneys and up to the eaves, while blooms and buds tumble over the walls and burst from the gardens into the street. Yes, I think Byrdsville might be called the smile-place on the old earth's round face.
But to return to Father and Tony at the front gate ”

“ 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. ”

“ It makes Belle mad for him to do Mamie Sue that way, and she calls it "prying"; but I think it is just kindness. How can you sympathize with your friends' affairs if you don't make them tell you all? And sympathy applied to life is like the gasoline in a motorcar, I think.
"Well, I should say they were all going," answered Tony enthusiastically. "Even Belle, the beauty, can hardly wait for the get-away. She is putting buttermilk on her freckles so that the moon won't see 'em. Miss Prissy is over at Roxanne's now, trying to baste Roxy together for the frolic." ”

“ Honors are mighty apt to shock a person when they come unexpectedly, and I don't believe expected ones bring half the joy that the surprise ones do. I feel humble to think that in less than a year the boys and girls of a place like Byrdsville have found me worthy of the leadership of such a sacred thing as a Girl Scout company will be. For, of course, of all the things that boys ever were in the world, nothing is so wonderful as being Scouts like so many hundreds and hundreds have been made all over the United States in the last three years. ”

“ Some of this Roxanne told me and some of it is my own surmise that came to me as we stood behind that old lilac bush.
"I don't believe it, but if it is true, you won't let your father's having done my brother that way make any difference in the way you love us, Lovey and Douglass and me, will you, Phyllis? We just need you that much more to help us through with the starving and freezing for the new invention that we are going to take better care of." Through all my misery I ask myself if any girl in the whole wide world ever had a friend like Roxanne Byrd? ”

“ Of course, I know he had nothing to do with taking the steel secret, and I am going to get on the cloud again and not worry over Roxanne's troubles until she needs something; and then I will come down and get it for her while she stays in the air,—if I can.
The really important things in a person's life underlie the daily occurrence like the sand that is at the bottom of the rose-bushes. School is the sand-bank of a girl's life, rather heavy, but supporting the roses of debates and picnics and commencement and expression impersonations like the one Friday night is to be. ”

“ 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 wonderful 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 anything 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. ”

“ As Roxanne asked the question she was trembling all over, but not in the deadly cold way I was, I felt sure. She couldn't have stood it and lived.
"Some one has been in the shed, taken samples of all my material, including the steel shavings that came from the last melting, and my notebook is gone. The process is stolen, Roxy, and all the sacrifices gone for nothing. I don't care for myself—but—you." His head was up in the same old portrait pose, but his arms trembled as he held them out to Roxanne. ”

“ Lovelace Peyton advised from his seat on the floor where he was alternately eating his piece of cake and rolling black pills from the crumbs that he caught in a pasteboard box.
And as I sat and munched that piece of historic Byrd cookery my brain turned over in my head and settled itself in a new way. My whole nature underwent a revolution. I saw that a person can either accept life as a piece of fluffy cake when it is handed to her or look on it all as—soggy. I'm going to follow Roxanne's example after this and see the fluffiness of the cake determinedly. ”

“ 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 doesn't act accordingly. He is slim and rosy and dimply, with yellow curls just mopped all over his head, and he has blue eyes 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. ”

“ I felt relieved that Roxanne felt that way, but I had to remind myself often of her rose-cloud disposition and watch carefully to see that no troubles that I can avert—like Helena Kirby—shall come to her or the Idol.
But I started on the subject of the impersonations that the Expression Class of Juniors is to give the last day of April, before the whole academy is turned over to the affairs of the Seniors, like graduation essays being practised from morning to night until you speak each one in your own dreams. ”

“ I am so tired when I go to bed. I just say 'God, you know,' and go to sleep. He understands, 'cause Miss Prissy has told him all about it beforehand."
"I just guess He does—without Miss Talbot's telling Him either," I answered as I came and sat on the front steps beside Roxanne. "And another thing, Roxanne—I—er, I don't quite know how to say it—but you—you talk like you are—that is, you seem to be friends with God just like you are with Tony Luttrell and Belle and Miss Prissy and the Colonel—and me," I continued with embarrassment. ”

“ Tony and Pink and Sam and the two Logan boys, while Roxanne and Mamie Sue and Belle and the two Willises, with me, make up the girls. Eleven is a sacred number, and I don't like for Belle and me to break the link by not being friends.
Tony is such a wise boy that he sometimes knows what a girl is thinking about when she doesn't tell him. Most of the time he just grins and leads us all on and we do tell him everything; especially Mamie Sue, if we don't warn her beforehand and make her wear a horsehair ring not to forget when he asks her questions. ”

“ We all slid down, including Mamie Sue, with astonishing grace, and I promised to begin to fix the Wigwam next week. I promised, but a pain hit my heart. Did I know that I would be in Byrdsville next week or ever again? What would Father do when that prosecution found him? For ten days I had not been letting myself think about the future, but it seems that every minute I live in Byrdsville, my heart winds around my friends and theirs around mine. ”

“ Will that do, Miss Prissy Bubble?" And again we all laughed, the Colonel the most of all, and even Belle a little, too.
"Phyllis, you are one perfectly good brick," Tony said suddenly, dropping the teasing of Miss Priscilla from his voice; and he looked at me with just as affectionate an expression in his squinty eyes as when he looks at Pink Chadwell. It is a great thing for a girl to feel that a fine boy likes her as much as he does his most chosen boy comrade. ”

“ Of course, the whole spring keeps springing wonderful days on a person, each one lovelier than the last; but the one that came down from over Old Harpeth, as the tallest hump on the ridge is called, was so lovely that it was hard to believe that I was not just seeing it with Roxanne's eyes. ”

“ 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 rheumatiz, 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 hopped off with all his feathers ruffled up and stretching his neck as if to try it.
"Oh, Lovey, please don't kill the chickens," Roxanne said in a tone of real pleading.
"I don't never kill nothing, Roxy," he answered indignantly. ”

“ I knew better than to let that family pride get to simmering in Roxanne in the wee small hours of the night. "A trade is a trade, as soon as it is made. Give me my dress."
"Oh, Phyllis, there never was anybody like you," laughed Roxanne in a voice that is like music to a person who understands what friendship really is and hasn't had very much. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Snakes," said Tony solemnly, as he sat down almost upon the toad on the bed by Lovey, "I've brought Pink, the Rosebud, to be operated on at my expense entirely. I have been trying to put algebra into his head for a solid hour, and now I want it split open so I can just chuck the book in whole to save my time. Shall I go get the axe?"
And Lovelace Peyton laughed just as much at Tony as the rest of us did, though the hen got frightened and began to squawk so that both Tony and Pink had to work to tie her down tighter. ”

“ These boys and girls, including Miss Priscilla, haven't been used to having things happen to them to distress them, and they are so warm-hearted and sympathetic that it makes it hard to say a thing to them that would hurt them. But I couldn't, couldn't go on being a public and distinguished character, if my father were going to be a public character of another kind. If people should say, "How his life must mortify his poor daughter, noble girl, with a medal and friends and things!" ”

“ When I got off the train in Byrdsville two months ago I couldn't have believed in that balloon, if it had been revealed to me in a vision. Do I deserve it all?
One of the reasons of my rosy view was that the Idol rode upon the front seat of the wagon, with the farmer who drove, and smoked one of Father's cigars and led all the songs in the most marvelously beautiful voice I ever heard. He was on the Glee Club at Princeton, and of course to have him come to the party at all was a compliment. ”

“ Roxy can't show her resentment, but her friends can. I'm a friend."
Belle uses words and talks like a grown 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 didn't have to make myself stop and remember that she does it because she has to. ”

“ Roxanne says Helena's expression was of one completely surprised, and she went on down the street without any more use of the smile or the red silk and lace dress. If a man is at all interested in a girl, he would be sure to get more pleasure and conversation than that out of a rose, I feel sure. Oh, a genius has to be guarded from so many things! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Just as I had got to Lovelace Peyton and soothed him by a few lines of the symptoms of fever and nausea and headache that come first in diphtheria, Roxanne stood at the door with a telegram in her hand for me, and my heart stopped beating while it took leaps all over my body, about fifty to the second. I promised Lovelace Peyton a half dozen rolls of antiseptic bandages and a paper of sticking-plaster and a June-bug, if I could find one, to let me into the living-hall to read it. ”

“ 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 Prissy to be sure and pray away those mumps and whooping-cough. I could manage measles." ”

“ I'm not romantic myself, but I could never treat a man with the lack of heart with which Miss Prissy treats Colonel Stockell. She makes herself as beautiful as possible and sits on the front porch with him, and I would call that an honorable cause for marriage, but Roxanne says that in Byrdsville no tie binds a lady to marry a gentleman until after it is done. ”

“ Tony Luttrell calls all of the girls collectively and singly "bubbles," which is both disrespectful and funny at the same time. But real affection in any disrespect can keep it from being at all wicked—and Tony's always is affectionate, especially when he insults Miss Priscilla by calling her Miss Bubbles right to her face. Nobody else dares to do it, but she likes it. It is a good thing that she is fifty years young instead of old, for if she wasn't I don't know what the Palefaces and Scouts would do without her. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Real love always has the right thing to say at the right time.
"Phyllis," she whispered in a tickling fashion right against my ear, "when Douglass told me about it last night he came back in my room to say, 'Don't tell a single soul but Phyllis.'"
If some accident should happen to make me famous, I wish the person that writes my biography could put down how I felt when Roxanne whispered that to me. I choked a little bit and Roxanne hugged the choke and was just beginning to tell me about the experiment when Lovelace Peyton called us to come to him. ”

“ A motherless girl and a wifeless man ought not to be judged in the same way other people are. I feel better now, and I'm leaving it all to God, who understands such situations as mine and Father's. Good-night, leather friend.
Somewhere back on your pages, Louise, I wrote that I was going to be thankful for the happiness and friends that I had, no matter what happened, and I am. It has happened. I am the lonely little child that got a peep through the high, barred gate into the garden where other children were playing in the sunshine, and then was put out into the dark street again. ”