Scouts would do without her. She lets Tony beg her
into doing everything with us so the grown-up people, like mothers and
fathers, will be deceived into thinking that we are being taken care
of, while the truth is that Miss Prissy is just as much trouble for us
to look after as Lovelace Peyton and we love her in exactly the same
way. We also love the Colonel a great deal for her sake, and to make
up for the way she treats him.

Miss Prissy lives just next to Roxanne, on the other side, and she is
such a comfort to her, though a great added responsibility. She
worries so over everything that Roxanne doesn't have that it gets on
Roxanne's nerves, as the people say when things make them cross. Not
that Roxanne ever is cross with Miss Prissy. But I made up my mind
after that first remonstrance that if Roxanne Byrd had the pluck to
let herself go hungry and cold and ragged for a great proud cause like
an inventor in the family, I was going to let her get all the fun out
of it she could and not mope over it. I still fill up Lovelace Peyton
so regularly that he is getting so fat I am afraid Roxanne will notice
and suspect something. I may have to diet him soon.

Roxanne and I were just talking about Miss Prissy and the poor Colonel
out on the front steps of the cottage when there came one of the proud
moments of my life. It's wonderful how Roxanne's enthusiasm can throw
such a magic over her shabby shoes and the little cottage with the
young green vines running over the eaves and old Uncle Pomp and a
darning bag full of ragged stockings, that you want to stay feeling it
forever and ever. It doesn't even take the rosy hue off the dream to
talk about Lovelace Peyton.

"Oh, Lovey will be a famous surgeon some day, I feel sure," Roxanne
said, as she began on another interminable job of stocking-patching.
"And Douglass is going to be a Supreme Judge of the United States
while I help him. Just as soon as the money comes we shall all go to
college, Lovey, Douglass, Uncle Pomp and I, to get ready for our life
work."

"What course will Uncle Pompey take?" I couldn't help asking, because
Uncle Pompey is so old he couldn't learn to turn one of his own batter
cakes the wrong way around.

"Domestic Science," Roxanne laughed back at her own self; and just
then Tony came in with his pie catastrophe that caused so much
trouble.

"You two hubbies, you had better lay aside the darning-needle and
seize the pie plate," he said, fanning h