n until I could come
back.

Mrs. Luttrell made me the Methodist speech and Mrs. Willis the
Presbyterian one, and they said so much that I felt sure they were
glad that I was only expected to say "Thank you!" and then sit down
while they all offered different resolutions about different things
that were never exactly decided but voted on, nevertheless.

When we came out of the church, I told Miss Priscilla about the box of
paper in such a determined tone of voice that she didn't refuse it at
all, and went with me to buy the pipe for the Colonel, which I know
will make it very valuable to him when I tell him who helped select
it. It is a very interesting thing to be neighbor and friend to a
mysterious love affair that is one of the traditions of Byrdsville. I
believe I have solved the why of the failure of their marriage to come
off, but until I am certain I won't even write it to you, Louise.

On my way home, I am glad to record, I took time to do a little
shopping. I bought some buckets we didn't need from one of the
littlest shops in town, some more groceries for the Satterwhites, a
bolt of gingham to make Sallie Geraldine and Judy Claudia some aprons,
then hurried back on the wings of anxiety to the bedside of Lovelace
Peyton, to get the diphtheria started. As I ran I could just feel him
thrashing around in the bed and persecuting Roxanne and Mamie Sue, if
she had not already escaped for her life.

But as fast as I tried to go, I met an interruption on the way up
Providence Road, that was agreeable although detaining from duty. Tony
and Pink and Sam stopped me and told me that they were just on their
way to bring me to the Crotch, and that I would be the first strange
person that had ever seen it, since they had fixed it up in the
Luttrell barn loft to have Scout meetings in. Mr. Douglass had planned
and helped them with it, and they said there never was such a place of
interest in Byrdsville. The reason they were going to show me was that
I must get the empty room over the garage Father has turned the old
family stable of the Byrds into, to make a wigwam for the Paleface
Patrol to have meetings and keep things in. They had asked Mamie Sue
to go with me because it would take two girls to remember all they
saw, and that would be the last time we could come there, though they
would come often to the Wigwam if we wanted them to show us how to be
as scouty as possible.

Just then Mamie Sue came up, and she either sn