ng as my own grandmother?" he said, in a warm voice so like
Roxanne's that the scarlatina on my face began to subside and my knees
stopped trembling. "You don't know how indebted to you I am for coming
over to make Roxy take a playtime."

Playtime, with all that pattern and darned aprons and my gingham dress
in a pile on the ancestral sofa in the corner with the scissors and
needle and thread gaping at Roxanne and me from the table! Women ought
to be very thankful at times for men's stupidity.

It was all very well for the red on my face to pale and my breath to
come easier again; but no fifteen-year-old girl has an answer ready
for a remark of a man who is as great and wonderful and famous as Mr.
Douglass Byrd is going to be soon. I was just getting so loose-jointed
from mortification that my mind had fainted away at the very time I
needed it, when Tony and Pink Chadwell came and broke into the
situation with the Raccoon whistle for the palefaces. They also broke
through the side window with their "Tip-hist-toe" signal that always
gives the girls cold creeps even in daytime. Mamie Sue calls it
goose-flesh and Tony reproves Belle for telling her that was what she
had all the time. I don't know what we would do with Belle if it
wasn't for Tony's powerful disposition. And one thing I am sure of,
never were there in this world such grand boys as Anthony Wayne
Luttrell and Matthew Foster Chadwell--that's Pink's whole name--for
they didn't any more notice that old flowered dress than if it had
been the blue gingham, or either Roxanne or me, but they gave the
scout-master salute to Mr. Douglass and began their business right
away.

[Illustration: He stood there in the doorway and laughed until his big
shoulders shook]

"Raccoon Chief," said Tony, "the patrol awaits you in the Crotch, at
your call."

"On my way," answered Mr. Douglass with just as much seriousness as
Tony had in his voice. Tony had told me how Mr. Douglass had organized
the Raccoon Patrol and taught it all it knows and was just the guiding
star of all their young lives, only Tony didn't put it that way; he
called him their "jolly old peace-maker." That means that all the
Raccoons look up to him and adore him and try to be exactly like him.
In the Bible if David had been eight years older than Jonathan, there
would have been the same situation in Jerusalem as in Byrdsville,
Tennessee.

"I wonder what is the matter with the Scouts," said Roxanne, as we