seem to be friends with God
just like you are with Tony Luttrell and Belle and Miss Prissy and the
Colonel--and me," I continued with embarrassment.

"I am," answered Roxanne, with beautiful positiveness. "I decided to
have Him for one of my friends 'most two years ago after Father and
Mother died almost together. When Douglass told me that we would have
to sell Byrd Mansion and move down here in this old cottage that had
been great-grandfather's gardener's house, with only Uncle Pompey to
help me take care of it and him and Lovelace Peyton, he asked me if I
couldn't stand by. I held my head up just as high as great-grandmother
Byrd does in her portrait and said: 'Yes!' 'Then God help you,' he
said, and he hugged me up under his chin. Then we all moved; and God
_has_ helped."

"He must have," I answered devoutly, meaning what I said. And as I
spoke something in me was loosened and I felt a wonderful difference
about God. The God that a governess explains out of a book to you and
the One that really comes down and helps a girl friend so that she can
speak of Him with confidence as a friend, are two distinct people. I
am going to feel about Him as Roxanne does and speak of Him when I
want to and write about Him to you, Louise, just as I do about all of
the other interesting inhabitants of Byrdsville.

"Oh," laughed Roxanne, as she snipped a thread and began to
cross-stitch the mammoth cavern, never dreaming of the momentous
resolve she was interrupting in my heart, "it is not so bad this year,
because Lovey has got so nice and steady on his feet and doesn't put
things in his mouth any more. Now he is so busy hunting and doctoring
his 'squirms' as he calls them, that I have lots of free time to mend
and darn and work. Of course, it is hard to have him keep them in his
apron pocket and always carrying them in his hand when he hasn't a
bottle that smells bad to carry. Just yesterday he brought a queer
kind of--Oh, what do you suppose he has found now?"

And with the fear and trembling that all girls have the right to feel
of "squirms" both Roxanne and I sat petrified while Lovelace Peyton
came around the house at full gallop and drew up in front of us on the
brick walk. His face was streaked with mud, and in one hand he held an
old tomato can and in another a dangerous-looking pointed stick.

Lovelace Peyton is freckled and snub-nosed and patched in various
unexpected places and his eyes were sweet like Roxanne's as th