These few days have been the most wonderful I have ever spent in all my life, the saddest and the most deeply happy. When a person's friends are in trouble, it is one time you can let your heart go its own pace no matter where it carries you, and for once I have had my way about pouring out my affection on the Byrds.

Lovelace Peyton is not going to die from his dreadful burns, the doctors say; but as yet they can't tell about his eyes. They don't dare remove the bandages, and whether or not he can see cannot be decided for a week or more. He has to stay in a dark room and be very quiet, and it is like trying to prove that impossible is possible to persuade him into lying in his bed in Roxanne's room, while we exert ourselves to the point of desperation to keep him happy and amused.

Since the accident Roxanne and I have just ignored the Byrd ancestors, and I bring whatever I choose across the garden into the cottage to Lovelace Peyton. In the first place, he wouldn't eat without me, and kept asking for things I had given him to eat; so I had to tell Roxanne about my dishonesty in feeding him like I had been doing, and she was so glad that he was fat and in good condition to stand the strain of his accident that she forgave me with her arms around my neck.

I wish I could put down in black and white between your brown covers, leather Louise, how happy it makes me to sit by that squirming, bandaged little boy, and feed him out of one of his thin ancestral spoons. Not one thing will he eat without me. I believe he knows how happy it makes me, and frets for me just for that special reason. That and the fact that he expects things of me made me think up the idea that has helped us through the awfulness of the days that we had to keep him quiet.

Lovelace Peyton is not like the little boy to whom you can tell stories about bears and Little Red Ridinghood and Goldilocks in ordinary form. He'll listen to it a few minutes, and then when you come to the point where the grandmother is ill for Little Red Ridinghood to go and visit, he stops and wants to know exactly what was the matter with her; and if you say you don't know, he turns over on his pillow and won't listen to the rest of it.

"Why don't folks write in books what diseases other folks have got, Phyllie?" he asked fretfully when I told him about Tiny Tim and the "Christmas Carol." "Do you reckon that little boy had rheumatiz and didn't know any plaster for it?"

I am really reverently thankful for the idea that popped into my sorely troubled head at that moment. Roxanne had gone out to walk in the garden for a little rest, for she has had to talk to him most of the night and describe over and over what the burn on his arm looked like when the doctor dressed it. I was with him by myself for a few minutes when I found the treasure of an idea.

"Lovelace Peyton," I said, with excitement in my voice more than the doctor would have approved of, "would you like me to get a real doctor's book and read you about each disease as it comes in the book and just what the doctors use to cure it with?"

"Phyllie," he said, sitting up in bed and waving the poor bandaged hand with delight shining from under the bandage above his eyes, "you go a running and git that book as fast as you kin. I will promise to lie right still and listen all day and all night forever. Hurry!"

I called Miss Priscilla to come quick as I saw her turning in the gate, and I took my hat and started down-town for the only bookstore in Byrdsville, which is kept in the post-office by the post-master. If I couldn't find a book about diseases there, I was determined to go and beg or borrow or steal one from the doctor himself. But I found the very one I wanted. It was called "First Aid in the Family," and it described more accidents and diseases than it seemed possible for mortal man to have. It was a large book and I was glad it cost five dollars. The post-master said a man had left it there for him to sell six months ago, and that it cost too much for most of the people in Byrdsville to doctor by. He offered to send it as soon as his boy came back, but I was in too much of a hurry to get back to Lovelace Peyton to wait, so I took it in my arms and started home with it.

On the way I met Helena Kirby walking down-town with the Petway boy, and they looked right into my face and passed me without speaking. It might have been because I was carrying the big book, but I didn't know Helena was that proud. It hurts me for people to treat me that way without any reason but just dislike for me and perhaps because they think it wicked about Father's money.

Just a little farther along I met Tony, and he took the book to carry for me, and I told him about Helena and the Petway boy looking at me and not offering to speak to me. Tony got red up to the roots of his hair, being mad, and looked like he would just as soon as not eat them both alive.

"Now, see here, Phyllis," he spluttered, "don't you pay one bit of attention to what a pair of jolly idiots like those two do or say. You are all right and we all know it. No matter what happens, we're for you. See?"

"Thank you, Tony," I said gratefully, but I didn't "see," and I was so puzzled over that "no matter what happens" that I felt weak in my brain.

In a few minutes still worse happened. Belle and Mamie Sue saw us, and Belle forcibly crossed Mamie Sue over and went down the side street just to keep from meeting us--that was as plain as day. Tony got still redder and talked fast about Lovelace Peyton to keep from seeming to notice the way the girls had acted toward us. I held up my head and did likewise.

Something awful has happened to me or about me in this town and I don't know what; but it is my duty to put it all out of my mind now and give my thoughts and cheerfulness to Roxanne and Lovelace Peyton, while they need me so much. I have made up my mind to forget it.

And it was fun to read to the prostrated medicine-man out of that book as I did all afternoon. I began with abscesses and got almost as far as aneurism before the sun began to set. I never saw anybody enjoy anything as much as Lovelace Peyton did each disease as I read about it; and the more bloodcurdling the description of the suffering and more awful the treatment, the more it interested him.

"I bet if I ever get a good sharp knife, I could stick it right in the pain place in Uncle Pompey's heel so it would bleed all the sore away," he said with keen enjoyment, as I read to him about the lancing of carbuncles.

"Oh, Lovey, I almost get the diseases while Phyllis reads about them," said Roxanne with a shudder. "Do you like to hear about such awful things?"

"Yes, I do," answered Lovelace Peyton decidedly. "And I wisht you would get every one of the diseases in that book, Rosy, so I could cure you like Phyllis reads--and Uncle Pompey and Doug, too. Only not Phyllis, 'cause I need her to read the cure to me, while I do it."

While we were all laughing at Lovelace Peyton and talking about the operations he is going to perform on the inhabitants of Byrdsville as soon as he gets grown, and deciding what each one is going to have, the Idol came in and stayed with us until the soft gray twilight began to come in the windows. He was so lovely and interesting that it was quite dark when I remembered that I must go home. Then he walked over through the garden with me, and out there under the stars he told me what the doctor had told him in the afternoon. Old Dr. Hughes is afraid to experiment with Lovelace Peyton's eyes, and says that a specialist must come from Cincinnati to examine them when they take off the bandages next week. Mr. Douglass has written to the doctor to see what it will cost, and he doesn't want Roxanne to know about it until he hears whether the doctor will come and give him time to pay for it.

"Oh, I don't believe the bug-hunter is going to have any trouble with seeing all right again and we'll get the big doctor down here to see him some way or other. Don't you worry, Miss Phyllis; I just told you because you are the best friend of all concerned, and I couldn't do anything without consulting you. See?" he asked, in the same protecting tone of voice that Tony had used in the afternoon when Belle and Mamie Sue did me that way.

After I was undressed I felt that I just must go into my mother's room for a minute; and I begged so hard that the night nurse who is a very kind lady, let me creep in for just a few seconds. I have got a theory about Mother and myself. I believe she knows when I am in the room, even if she can't show it by moving or even opening her eyes, and it is a comfort to her and me both to have me come and kneel at the foot of her bed well out of sight. I did get comforted to-night, too, and the thought that did it was this. If Father and I don't do as well as other people in the world, and get rich and do things that we ought not to, we have not had her to direct and control and comfort us like she would have done if she could; and no wonder we have strayed. A motherless girl and a wifeless man ought not to be judged in the same way other people are. I feel better now, and I'm leaving it all to God, who understands such situations as mine and Father's. Good-night, leather friend.

Somewhere back on your pages, Louise, I wrote that I was going to be thankful for the happiness and friends that I had, no matter what happened, and I am. It has happened. I am the lonely little child that got a peep through the high, barred gate into the garden where other children were playing in the sunshine, and then was put out into the dark street again. I ought not to say that, though, when I have got Mr. Douglass Byrd for a star in my darkness, as he has made himself by the way he has treated me.

I am glad I stopped by on my way to school this morning to see Roxanne and Lovelace Peyton while I was their light-hearted companion still: now I am a woman of sorrows and disgrace. Also, I am glad, if the blow had to be dealt me, it was Belle who did it, and not Mamie Sue nor one of the two Willises, nor anybody else. I have always had a strange feeling about that bracelet with the red set, anyway, and I am not surprised that she struck me with it.

"Miss Forsythe," she said, as she held it out to me all wrapped up in tissue paper and tied with a blood red string, "I will have to return your present to you, with thanks. I cannot keep a bracelet given me by a girl whose father would go like a chicken thief and rob a neighbor's shed of a valuable thing like an invention. Please excuse me!"

For a minute I stood struck dumb, and watched Belle's pink gingham skirt switch as she walked through the door of the school-room. They had all the lunch spread on the flat rock, and I thought were waiting for me while I put my desk in order just after the bell rang. And even while I watched Belle I was conscious of Mamie Sue's fat expression of distress as she paused with a biscuit spread with jam half-way to her mouth. The Willis girls looked struck even dumber than usual, and as if they didn't know what to do. I didn't give them a chance to decide on anything. I picked up my hat from the ground and walked out the gate with my head as high, as if my honor had not been laid low.

I was walking just as fast as I could past the cottage, hoping that nobody would see me before I got here to my room to realize my agony myself, when Roxanne ran out of the door to catch me at the gate.

"Oh, Phyllis, don't look like that," she exclaimed as she drew me through the gate and behind the big lilac bush that is full of purple blooms. "It doesn't make one bit of difference to me, and I love you just the same. Who told you?"

"Belle," I answered, trying to keep my face and voice steady. "Who found it out, Roxanne?"

"Oh, Tony scouted it all out, though he didn't mean to. It was that awful smelly bottle Lovey gave your father. Tony smelled it talking to Mr. Forsythe at the gate and then again in the shed. He couldn't connect them at first; but after a while he remembered, and then he began to suspect something awful--he oughtn't to have done it, but he did. He followed your father and Mr. Rogers out to the furnaces one night and--saw Mr. Rogers explain it to your father. Then Mr. Forsythe went away the next morning and Douglass began to watch Mr. Rogers, and just three days after that he found him out at the furnace at night with a workman getting some of the ovens ready to try the experiments. He couldn't do a thing, and had to let them take his discovery and do as they wanted to. Oh, truly Phyllis, it doesn't make a bit of difference in our love for you."

"How did Belle find it out, and why should they think Father is dishonest--even if Rogers is?" I asked, still as cold as ice though my head seemed to be on fire.

"That is what is nearly killing Tony," answered Roxanne, with a sob beginning to come in her voice; but she still held on to me tight, as stiff as I was. "He and Douglass have known it for a week, and they never wanted anybody else to know about it on your account. Douglass says he would rather give up ten fortunes than hurt such a friend as you have been to us, but Tony let the secret get out by accident, and now all the town knows it. Judge Luttrell is getting out an injunction, even if Douglass won't sign it, and the Colonel is getting ready to go on the next train to find your father and--and remonstrate with him, he says."

"Tony didn't tell Belle about it on purpose, did he?" I asked to be sure. "I couldn't have stood that."

"Oh, no, it was Mamie Sue that found out part, and told Belle, without knowing she had done it, just yesterday. Mamie Sue says she wishes she never had any eyes or ears or anything to taste with, then maybe she would never get into trouble. It is all on account of people thinking she is more stupid than she is. Tony told Douglass right before her, on the street while she was giving both of them some of that fudge she had made to bring Lovelace Peyton, that Mr. Rogers had been in the telegraph office and had telegraphed your father that the experiment night before last was a success. Tony is ambitious as a Scout should always be and has learned to read the ticking of the telegraph.

"'Anyway, Doug, it's a cinch that you have made one of the greatest practical inventions of the day,' Tony said, forgetting Mamie Sue entirely and so did Douglass, as he answered:

"'That's true, Raccoon, and if the fortune is another man's by robbery, the brains are mine. I'll get my share yet. Wait until this new idea gets into shape.'"

And then Roxanne went on to say that Mamie Sue said they hardly remembered her enough to politely thank her for the fudge, as they walked away talking. She went on down to Belle's; and when Belle began to say that Tony was stupid because he couldn't read his Cicero, Friday, she tried to defend him by telling how he can read telegraphy even if he can't read Latin.

Belle was mean enough to get it all from Mamie Sue without Mamie Sue suspecting that she was telling anything that would hurt me; and Belle told Helena and Helena told the ladylike Petway, who told his father, who told Judge Luttrell before night. The Judge sent for the Idol before breakfast this morning and told him that he was an idiot to let such a thing be stolen and he is beginning all kinds of prosecutions and things against Father, though my noble hearted friend won't sign them on account of his esteem for me. And, of course, the whole town knows of it and is excited. It is not astonishing that Byrdsville is wild to find out that it has reared a great inventor, only to have his first fruits stolen. I feel with Byrdsville, even if they feel against me. Some of this Roxanne told me and some of it is my own surmise that came to me as we stood behind that old lilac bush.

"I don't believe it, but if it is true, you won't let your father's having done my brother that way make any difference in the way you love us, Lovey and Douglass and me, will you, Phyllis? We just need you that much more to help us through with the starving and freezing for the new invention that we are going to take better care of." Through all my misery I ask myself if any girl in the whole wide world ever had a friend like Roxanne Byrd?

And as if having Roxanne hold me in both arms and love me beyond my wildest expectations was not enough, what should happen to me? The Idol came around the bush full of blooms where we stood, and did likewise. He put his long arms around Roxanne and me and hugged us both up like we were not any bigger than Lovelace Peyton.

"You two precious kiddies are not to pay any attention to disagreeable things that are not any of your business," he said in his wonderful voice that was as big and booming and comforting as any anthem sung in church where a sinner goes for help. That's what it sounded like to me.

"That's what I tell Phyllis, Douglass--she's more valuable than the loss of any kind of a big fortune, that we really don't need at all to make us happy, while we do need her." Roxanne was laughing and crying and hugging me so that she got herself mixed in her words in a perfectly beautiful and loving way.

I am glad that my affection for these kind friends inspired me so that I could answer them like I wanted to--at least I tried so hard to say how I felt that I almost succeeded.

"You are both the best friends that were ever created for a lonely girl," I answered, drawing out of both pairs of arms, and looking them both square in the face. "But I am my father's daughter and must suffer for his sins, if he has them. If he has done this dreadful thing, which I don't believe, then I don't deserve your friendliness, and I can't take what it is not right for me to have. I'm going home and stay there until he comes, and then if he can't explain and has to pay any penalty I'm going to do it with him."

"Oh, Phyllis, and what will Lovey do without you?" Roxanne begged, using the strongest thing she could have said to me when I thought of the little blind boy that wanted and needed me so badly.

"You will punish him and us for something we can't help," the Idol said to me with reproach in his eyes and voice that nearly killed me.

"You both have had your kind of pride about taking gifts from me ever since I have known you," I answered, looking them full in the eyes, "and you have taught me what the word means. I could take things to eat and wear from you, but my kind of pride won't let me take your friendship when you think my father has treated you like this. Good-by! I can't stay any longer to be tortured." And with that I turned and walked away from them both, forever, I am afraid.

It isn't true, it can't be! But if it is? One thing I have made up my mind to do: I am going to ask Father, if it is all true, to let me go away from Byrdsville. I can't stay here; it will be too empty a life for me to watch them living with me out of it. I hope he will go and take Mother too. Judge Luttrell may prosecute him so he will have to.

Is this the end of the life that bloomed out in me like the apple blossoms do on the bare trees, only to be shattered? No! I hope I will bear fruit from having had so much happiness, like the apple-trees do from their blooms, and I'm going to try.

Just here I laid down Louise and went to see what I could see going on down at the cottage before dark. And there was old Uncle Pompey hanging over our garden wall smoking his pipe and just crying into his funny red bandanna handkerchief. Something tells me that he is going to miss me very much also. I am thankful for the love of this old negro, which I am sure is just the same quality as if he were white.

I think if I could just steal in for one minute and look at Lovelace Peyton's little bandaged head it would make the pain in my heart easier for having to give him up, but even that I can't do. I've found how strong pride is as well as bitter.