velace Peyton consumed the first cooky I offered him over
the fence. Thank goodness, he has no family pride located in his
stomach, and when my feelings overcome me he is the outlet. I can feed
him anything at all hours and he is always ready for more. It may be
wrong to keep it from his sister when I know how she feels about it,
but I can't help that. I have to fill him up. His legs look too empty
for me.

But, to do Lovelace Peyton justice, he has got his own kind of pride,
and I understand it better than I do Roxanne's.

"For these nice eatings, I'll cut a cat open for nothing and let you
see inside what makes him go, if you get the cat," he offered, after
he had eaten two slices of buttered bread and the breast of half a
chicken out behind one of the lilac bushes in his ancestral garden
that is now mine.

Now, I call that a fair proposition, considering the circumstances,
and I wish I could make Roxanne be as sensible in spirit. But I can't.
Family pride is a terrible thing, like lunacy or hysterics when a
person gets it bad.

However, I decided to talk to Roxanne about her financial situation,
and I began as far off from the subject as I could, so as to approach
it with caution.

I made a start with a compliment. A sincere compliment is a good way
to start being disagreeable to a person for her own benefit.

"Roxanne," I said, with decided palpitation in my heart that I kept
out of my voice, "you didn't know, did you, that you are one
fifteen-year-old wonder, done up in a feminine edition with curls and
dark eyes? How do you manage it all?"

"I'm not, and I don't," answered Roxanne with a laugh as she drew a
long needle across a mammoth darn she was making on the knee of a
stocking which was quite as small as the darn was large. "I don't
manage at all; everybody will tell you so. Miss Prissy Talbot says she
can't get to sleep at night until twelve o'clock because she has to
pray about so many things that might happen to us poor forlorns if she
didn't. I am mighty thankful to her, for I don't have time to pray
much. I am so tired when I go to bed. I just say 'God, you know,' and
go to sleep. He understands, 'cause Miss Prissy has told him all about
it beforehand."

"I just guess He does--without Miss Talbot's telling Him either," I
answered as I came and sat on the front steps beside Roxanne. "And
another thing, Roxanne--I--er, I don't quite know how to say it--but
you--you talk like you are--that is, you