rn to be gracious and say lovely things like
Roxanne, but I'm just a corked bottle and I can't get the stopper out.

"What are you doing?" I asked her instead of giving her a squeeze and
saying, "You are the dearest thing on earth to me, Roxanne," which was
what I really felt.

"I'm sitting here before this old dress I found in the trunk in the
attic and trying to think how I could make Lovey wear the flowered
aprons I can make out of it. I almost know he won't, for he has begun
to say what 'looks boy' and what 'looks girl.' I did hope I could keep
him ignorant of the difference this summer at least. Would you ask him
before you make the aprons or trust to his not noticing?"

The old dress was the full skirt of fifty years ago, with huge red
roses on a white-and-green dotted background, and, as aprons, would
have made the snake doctor look like a very young circus. I couldn't
stand the thought and cranked my mind as hard as I could for a half
minute. The idea came, and it is a good thing to be perfectly straight
in the treatment of your friends at all times, so that when a crisis
comes they will depend on you.

"Roxanne," I said, looking determinedly and sternly into her face with
Father's own expression, "have I ever offered you a single thing to
eat except when you were company like the other girls, or anything
else that would hurt the Byrd pride?"

"No, you haven't, Phyllis, and that's why I don't mind telling or
letting you see things. You understand that it is for the cause, and I
don't have to be afraid that you will hurt--hurt my feelings."

I never thought it would be possible for a girl to look at me like
Roxanne Byrd looked at me across the pile of ragged little aprons and
old dresses. I thank God for it!

"Well," I said, "for that dress I want to trade you this blue gingham
I have got on to make the aprons out of. It will make three if the
tucks are ripped out of the skirt. I want the old flowered skirt to
make some cushions for the window seat in the room I sleep in, for it
will be just the thing to go with the old mahogany of your
grandmother's. It is real old-fashioned chintz and is worth just about
ten times as much as this dress I have got on, which you know I bought
at Mr. Hadley's, with the other dozen ones that Miss Green is making
for me, at twenty-five cents a yard. Will you?"

Roxanne doesn't know about that awful spending burden I have had laid
on me and she is just as interested in helpi