at you got
first mention for your character sketch of Hawthorne in the rhetoric
class; but Tony says you always get it. You recite your German poems
like they were English, and you feel them as much as you do
Cassabianca. When do you study?"

"Never," answered Roxy with a ruthful smile; "but, Phyllis, in school
I listen. I have to. Just school hours are all I have; but I learn
lessons while they are being recited, and write exercises and things
in that one free hour I have at ten o'clock. If nothing like mumps or
whooping-cough happens to Lovey this winter or next, I believe I will
be ready to go to college with you and Belle and Mamie Sue and Tony
and Pink. I've asked Miss Prissy to be sure and pray away those mumps
and whooping-cough. I could manage measles."

"But you are just one girl, Roxanne, with the usual number of hands
and feet and eyes and things," I said, with an intention of bringing
things to the point of the embarrassing hunger. But my point was
reached in the conversation by Roxanne herself without my being quite
ready for it.

"Yes, I know that, but for a little while I have got to be several,"
she answered with a laugh. "Douglass has succeeded in the experiments
out there in the back yard, but he can't be certain of the process
until he tries it on a whole oven full of ore some night out at the
furnaces. He just works every minute he can get, all night sometimes,
and that is why I mend and darn and save and save--it costs so much
for him to get the things he needs out in his shop. Of course, I never
let Lovey or Uncle Pomp get really hungry, but Douglass and I do--that
is--" Roxanne stopped, for the pain _would_ come out on my face.
"Oh, Phyllis, not really hungry," she said mercifully, "but just tired
of corn-bread and molasses. Douglass kisses me and I kiss him good-by
in the morning and we pretend it is butter on his bread, like the poet
said. Please don't feel bad about it, Phyllis. It was cruel for me to
tell it when I am as happy as I can be."

"Well, you'll never be hungry again while I have two feet and hands to
'tote' food to you, as Uncle Pompey calls it," I answered with a
masterly control of that troublesome lump in my throat that I had
discovered for the first time since I began to love Roxanne Byrd.

"I couldn't let you do that--bring me food, Phyllis," said Roxanne
gently; and her little head with its raven black, heavy curls again
rose to the stately pose of the Byrd great-grandmo