that was not so nice as Tony's.

"We would, if it wasn't for the fact that Petway does the knitting act
so well that he is a perfect lady. We never could equal him," answered
Tony, with jolly good humor to save our feelings from being hurt by
Sam.

"Well, I don't believe it will hurt--" I was just going to say, when
we heard Uncle Pompey, calling down in the barn for me to please come
quick before Lovelace Peyton killed them all dead.

We all slid down, including Mamie Sue, with astonishing grace, and I
promised to begin to fix the Wigwam next week. I promised, but a pain
hit my heart. Did I know that I would be in Byrdsville next week or
ever again? What would Father do when that prosecution found him? For
ten days I had not been letting myself think about the future, but it
seems that every minute I live in Byrdsville, my heart winds around my
friends and theirs around mine. To take me away now would be to tear
me--but where was Father, and why didn't I hear what he is going to do
and have done to him?

As I once more hurried down the street to the diphtheria lesson, it
seemed to me that Byrdsville broke on me all suddenly as a lovely and
maybe to-be-lost vision. All the leaves have come out on the trees and
vines now, and everybody's yard is in bloom and is full of sweet
odors. Doors and windows stand wide open and people sit on their front
porches and visit back and forth like every evening was a great big
party. And amid it all I have felt like I belonged to something for
the first time in my life.

Then suddenly it came true that now I do belong. This is how it
happened! Just as I had got to Lovelace Peyton and soothed him by a
few lines of the symptoms of fever and nausea and headache that come
first in diphtheria, Roxanne stood at the door with a telegram in her
hand for me, and my heart stopped beating while it took leaps all over
my body, about fifty to the second. I promised Lovelace Peyton a half
dozen rolls of antiseptic bandages and a paper of sticking-plaster and
a June-bug, if I could find one, to let me into the living-hall to
read it. I felt that if it said, "No," about the secret article I
couldn't trust myself not to let him know that something was the
matter.

It didn't say "No!" Wait, I'll copy it, Louise!

A payment of one thousand dollars for articles from you will
be in Byrdsville on Saturday. Letter follows.

COUSIN GILMORE.

My knees shook under me, and my eyes couldn't