the time we
have lost out of each other's company, at least just skim the cream
off each other's lives, but we'll never get to it. Too many people
want Roxanne besides me, and I'm grateful to be allowed to be in the
things she is in. I try to keep the other girls from feeling that I am
in the way, and I don't believe they would feel that way at all if
Belle didn't still keep prodding them up with her distrust of my
money. I wish Belle just had a little wealth and would find out that
it isn't anything at all and can be forgotten without the least
trouble.

Mamie Sue wants to like me and the two silent Willises do, also, but
Belle dusts my gold into their eyes so they can just blink at me so
far. But the blinks get friendlier every day and I hope some shock
will make them open their eyes to me like kittens do on the ninth
day--and their hearts, too.

The tallest Willis gave me the first peony that bloomed on their bush
to take to my mother, and I caught a sight of her awkward heart that
did me good. I defied the nurse and told the white, white little thing
on the pillow, that is all the mother I ever had, that one of my
friends sent it to her, and I got a flash of a smile, such as I had
never had before. The nurse said just that little bit of excitement
made her worse, and I've promised never to do anything but take my
daily look at her again--but--she _is_ my mother, even if--

Well, anyway, Louise of leather, just as Roxanne and I had got the
skirt ripped up and the pattern straightened out, we saw all the girls
coming, and from the way they were talking we saw something
interesting was surely happening, had happened, or was going to
happen.

"Hide the gingham, Roxanne, while I slip over the wall and change my
dress," I said quickly. "Our business arrangements are nobody else's
business."

"Will you come right back?" asked Roxanne in a way that made me know
she would worry if I didn't.

I would rather have stayed at home until the girls had had their visit
and gone home, but I have thought out just how I ought to act about
Roxanne and her friends and me. It is only fair to pay no attention to
how they feel, but to do what makes Roxanne happy in case of the
mix-up of us all. My pride and Roxanne's are different. Hers has been
handed down for generations and she can act on it without argument
with herself, but mine is my own kind and only I understand it. It is
new and I have to plan it out by thinking. The girl