n the morning mail, that I can sell the Washington letters
and I am going immediately to arrange about it that way. You know,
though, how great it was of you to do this, and how it makes us all
love you. We don't have to tell--"

But here he was interrupted by an avalanche of words that must have
been dammed up in me for all the fifteen years of my life for that
special occasion, and I delivered them with an eloquence that must
have equaled that famous valedictory of Colonel Stockell's at the Byrd
Academy, the year he left for the war. I told him just what a lonely
life had been broken into by the sunshine of Roxanne's and Lovelace
Peyton's and his family affection for me, and now they were just the
core of my heart, which he was wounding. I described in detail how I
had suffered when Roxanne and Lovelace Peyton had been hungry, and had
been brought to the dishonesty of feeding him in private, with never a
word of my suffering to hurt that Byrd family pride that they are
turning as a weapon on me. I even mentioned the patches on his
trousers and the break in Roxanne's shoes that had been patches and
rents in my own heart. I tried to make them see how hard it had been
when I have been commanded to buy things for people that I didn't care
about hardly at all, except as fellow-beings, when I was hungry to
give what was needed to my most beloved. By this time I had got to the
point of exaltation, and Roxanne had hid her head on my shoulder,
while that Idol's eyes were so wide with astonishment that I thought
he would never be able to get them to normal size again. "And after
Lovelace Peyton has hurt himself in my cause, as he did from hearing
that I wanted an explosion," I still ruthlessly continued, "you want
to deny me the happiness of getting his eyes saved by my own unaided
efforts. When I was disgraced and humiliated, I put that kind of pride
I had aside and came to you when you called me because you needed me,
trusting in your friendship for me and love of me, but now that the
time has come for you to yield just a little bit of your pride, you
won't do it for me."

Here I paused, and a thought of explanation for their cruelty came
over me. "Because I am my father's daughter, do you think this money I
have made is tainted, too? And is that the reason why you don't want
to use it?"

"Oh, Phyllis!" Roxanne gasped under my chin, and the Idol got as white
as a sheet and his eyes looked like I had struck him a blow.

"