on both the inside and
outside, and Roxanne pushed while I pulled. We tore him and his
clothes both a great deal, but at last we landed him. Then Roxanne put
him to bed to punish him and to mend his dress at the same time. That
was when she told me the great secret that it is hurting me to keep,
because it has got my Father mixed up in it in a sort of conspiracy
like you read about in books. I don't dare write it even to you,
leather Louise.

CHAPTER II

Changing a lifelong principle is almost as difficult as wearing new
shoes that don't exactly fit you, and it makes you feel just as
awkward and limp in mind as the shoes do in feet. Still I believe in
adopting new ideas. I have never liked the appearance of boys, and I
never supposed that when you knew one it would be a pleasant
experience; but in the case of Tony Luttrell it is, and in the case of
Pink Chadwell it is almost so.

I don't know what Roxanne said to them all to explain her relations of
friendship with the heathen--myself--but it was funny to see how they
tried to please her by seeming to like me, only Tony didn't _seem_. He
offered me himself as a friend along with all the bites I cared to
take off the other side of a huge apple he was eating. I took the
bites and Tony at the same time with fear and trembling, but my
confidence in him grows every day. It grows in Pink, also, only much
more slowly.

Tony is long-legged and colty looking, with such a wide mouth and
laughing kind of eyes that the corners of your own mouth go up when
you look at him, and he raises a giggle in your inside by just a funny
kind of flare his eyes have got; but Pink Chadwell is different. Poor
Pink is so handsome that he is pitiful about it. He carries a bottle
of water in his pocket to keep the curl of his front hair sopped out,
but he can't keep his lovely skin from having those pink cheeks. Tony
calls him "Rosebud" when he sees that he has got used to hearing
himself called "Pinkie" and is a little happy.

The surprise to me was that the boys were so much nicer to me than the
girls when Roxanne adopted me; but then it didn't make so much
difference to them. The girls are always together in all of the
important things of their lives, while most of the time the boys just
forget all about us, unless they need us for something or we get ahead
of them in class.

"I'm so glad that you are going to stay and have lunch with us
to-day," Belle said to me the first time I