lp being a
little sad as I spoke the truth out to her, for I am fifteen years
old, and fifteen are a good many years to live lonely. "I haven't any
friends in all the world. We have traveled everywhere trying to get
mother well, but I've had no chance to make friends. This is the first
time a girl ever talked to me in my life, and I never did talk to a
boy--and I never want to."

"Oh, Phyllis, how dreadful!" said Roxanne; and she gave me such a hug
around the neck that it hurt awfully, only I liked it. It did feel
funny to have somebody sniffing tears of sympathy against your cheek,
and I didn't know exactly what to do. Petting has to be learned by
degrees and you can't come to it suddenly. But I was happy.

And I'm happier to-night than I ever was in my life, only still scared
quite a little, too. I wonder how the boys and girls are going to like
Roxanne's being friends with me. How can they hate me if I haven't
ever done anything to them? It makes me nervous to think about it, and
that combined with the secret and the accident that didn't happen to
Lovelace Peyton make my writing so shaky that I may never be able to
read it.

This is the accident and the secret. Of course, I knew that there
never was such a glorious person born in the world as Roxanne's grown
brother, Mr. Douglass Byrd, but I didn't know what kind of a genius he
was. It was something of a shock to find out, for I felt sure he was a
wonderful poet that the world was waiting to hear sing forth. That is
what he looks like. He's tall and slim except his shoulders, which are
almost as broad as father's, and his eyes are the night-sky kind that
seem to shine because they can't help it. His smile is as sweet as
Roxanne's, only the saddest I ever saw; and his hair mops in curls
like Lovelace Peyton's, only it is black, and he won't let it. This
description could fit a great artist or a novelist or an orator, but
he isn't even any of these; he's an inventor.

The invention has something to do with the pig iron out at the
Cumberland Iron Furnaces that father owns in the Harpeth Valley, and
Mr. Douglass works for him. It turns it into steel sooner than anybody
else has ever discovered how to do it before, and it is such a
wonderful invention that it will make so much money for him and his
family that they won't know what to do with it. Roxanne is going to
tell me more about it to-morrow.

I didn't say anything to keep Roxanne from being happy over her
bro