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."

"I think Roxanne always looks lovelier than anybody," I said quickly;
for I didn't think I could bear to have even Tony, when I know what a
great love he has for her, criticize Roxanne's shabbiness. They don't
any of them know what a heroine she is, and about the great cause.

"Course she looks good, 'cause she is the pretty child; but I always
feel like carrying a needle and thread and a card of pins when Roxy is
along. And let me tell you the bug-doctor is about to burst out into
the cold world from his aprons. I know old Doug makes enough to rag
the family, but Roxy is just behindhand getting rabbit skins to wrap
the buntings in. Lots of girls are poky about doing around."

If Tony Luttrell had known how cruel that sounded, it would have broken
his heart. But I couldn't tell him what a heroine Roxanne is and I just
had to shudder in my soul to see her so misunderstood--Roxanne, whose
every day is just one big patch on life.

"It is lovely of Miss Priscilla to go with us," I said, to change the
subject.

"It would be a dry hay ride if the Miss Bubble wasn't sitting in the
very midst of the crowd and the wagon, with the Colonel prancing along
beside on old White. Your father is going to ride out with the Colonel
and--but that's the surprise. Being with your gingham gang so much, I
am about to get the talks." And Tony put his hand over his mouth and
moved away from me as if I had the scarlet fever.

I laughed at Tony and from sheer happiness at thinking that my father
was going with us in the fine company of the Colonel and Miss
Priscilla. I wonder what we would do, if we had to have somebody go to
places with us who thought they had to chaperon us? Miss Prissy is
just one of us and would go if we had to ask somebody like Belle's
mother, for instance, who is always talking about chaperons, to go
also.

As I have remarked before, Byrdsville is a very different place from
most of the