I'd even be willing to have him keep the grocery store
even if it did mean that he wasn't quite as first-family as Judge
Luttrell and the Byrds.

Oh, I do love my father--I do--I do!

CHAPTER IV

It does seem a pity that a person can't put an Idol on a pedestal and
keep it here without having it come down and bother around the house.
The idea of being introduced to Mr. Douglass Byrd and having to speak
directly to him with my own voice has kept me miserable all this month
in which I have been so perfectly happy being Roxanne's friend and
confidante, but it has happened and I'm glad it's over, though it was
under trying circumstances.

These are they. My fears have come to pass and in this eventful month
Lovelace Peyton has grown from a slender, frail little boy into almost
as much of a roly-poly as Mamie Sue, and looks more like her than he
does like Roxanne. I try not to feed him more than four times a day
extra, but he is stern with me about it. Sometimes he will trade the
cake I give him about four o'clock for a new shaped bottle, but lots
of times he gets the bottle and the cake both away from me. I just
can't be strong-minded with Lovelace Peyton, like I ought to be to
make up for the way Roxanne forgets to see him from the rosy cloud.

"If you'll give me a bottle, I'll give you one mouth-kiss, Phyllis;
but for cake and bottles too, I can maybe make it two," is the way he
bargains with me. Fifteen years is a long time to starve for a little
brother to love, so Lovelace Peyton almost always gets both the cake
and bottles.

But his fat has begun to burst out of all the clothes he has and
somebody has got to get him new ones. Roxanne and I were managing it
when Mr. Douglass interrupted us this morning; and I'm glad a man is
so much stupider than a woman or maybe his feelings would have got
hurt and I'd have had to argue him into my plan like I did Roxanne. I
feel sure I would have failed with him. He is the first Idol I ever
had and I am new at managing either friends or idols. However, I have
got so I can get the best of Roxanne when it is urgently necessary.

"It's the funniest thing to me, Phyllis," Roxanne said the other
afternoon, as I went over to see her about my rhetoric lesson, "but
rich as you are, I don't at all mind your seeing my scrimps like I do
the other girls, even Mamie Sue. You are like finding a grandmother's
thimble that fits you exactly and is pure gold."

Oh, I wish I could lea