all sorts of creeps and crawls in his pocket all
of the time. He pulls bugs and worms apart and tries to put them
together again; and he choked the old rooster nearly to death trying
to poke down his throat some bread and mud made up into pills.

That is what I ran to help Roxanne about, and the poor old chicken was
gaping and gasping terribly. 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. "If a
thing can't get well from me doctoring it, it dies 'cause it wants to.
Since Uncle Pomp let me put that mixtry of nice mud and brick dust on
his shoe he don't suffer with his frost-bit heel no more. He's going
to stop limping next week if I put it on every day. I'm going to pound
another piece of brick right now," and he went around the house with
the darlingest little lope, because he always rides a stick horse,
which prances most of the time.

"Oh, isn't he awful?" said Roxanne; but there was the kind of pride in
her voice and the kind of look in her eyes that I would have if I had
a little brother like that, even if he was so dirty that he would have
to be handled with tongs.

"He's so awful I wish he was mine," I answered, and then we both
laughed.

I had never thought, leather Louise, that I would have a nice laugh
like that with a girl who was only treating me kindly to keep from the
sin of spite. It was hard to believe that Roxanne didn't really like
me when she went on to tell me some of the dreadful funny things
Lovelace Peyton does almost every hour. I forgot about her feeling for
me and was laughing at her description of how she came home from
school one day and found old Uncle Pompey, who is as black and old as
a human being can be and is all the servant Roxanne has to help her,
cooking dinner with a piece of newspaper pasted in strips all over his
face, which was Lovelace Peyton's remedy for neuralgia.

But just as I was enjoying myself so as to be almost unconscious I saw
Belle and Mamie