let Roxanne beg me into
bringing my lunch instead of going home for it, as I had been doing
every day to keep from seeming to be so alone, eating all by myself
while they had spread theirs all together out on the side porch or
even out on the big flat stone when it was warm enough. "When Roxy
wanted to invite you, I felt sure you wouldn't come."

Some people have a way of freezing up all the pleasure that they can
get close enough to talk over. Belle is that kind. She made me so
uncomfortable that I was about to do some freezing on my own account
when Mamie Sue lumbered into the conversation in such a nice, friendly
way that I laughed instead.

"I hope you brought a lot of food, for I'm good and hungry to-day,"
she said. "I ate so many biscuits for breakfast that I left myself
only five to bring for lunch. Our cook makes the same number every day
and I just see-saw my lunch and breakfast in a very uncomfortable way.
So many biscuits for breakfast, so few for lunch!" That jolly, plump
laugh of Mamie Sue's is going to save some kind of a serious situation
yet, friend leather Louise.

If you are the kind of person that has dumb love for your friends, you
see more about them than folks who can express themselves on the
sacred subject. That lunch party with those five jolly girls out in
the side yard of the Byrd Academy gave me a funny, uneasy feeling, and
I now know the reason. Roxanne Byrd brought one small apple, two very
thin biscuits, and some cracked hickory nuts. She carefully ate less
than she brought. Something took my appetite when I saw her eat so
little, and there was a quantity of food left for somebody to consume,
and _she_ hungry. I was afraid we'd have to send for a doctor for
Mamie Sue after she had cleared my large napkin we spread to put it
all on. The Jamison biscuits are cut on the same plump pattern that
Mamie Sue is and all my sandwiches were good and thick.

But when Roxanne didn't eat I suffered. One of the most awful
situations in life is to have one of your friends be the sort of girl
that has a town named after her and wonderful family portraits and
such dainty hands and feet that shabby shoes don't even count, and
then to know that she is hungry most of the time from being too poor
to get enough food. For two days I have had to keep my mind off
Roxanne Byrd to make myself swallow one single morsel of anything to
eat. I suspected it at the school lunch but I was certain of it from
the way Lo