“But, haven’t you got any apple plan at all?” I again forgot my resolve and asked.  I’m often ashamed of myself for being so practical about things, but I can’t help it, and I couldn’t see those pies coming down on a rainbow.  She had to have the apples to save her family pride, and apples don’t grow on dream trees.

“Not a plan,” she answered, snipping a thread with a steady hand.  “But they’ll come from some place.  Now, I’ve got to think up stories to make Lovey forget that he wants anything but some corn-bread and buttermilk for supper.  That’ll save the batter-cake flour for the pie-crust and some of the lard and butter too.  If I can amuse him past breakfast with just corn meal mush, I’ll have enough flour for them all.  Uncle Pompey has lots of spice and things, so it’ll only be the apples.  Maybe I can—­”

“Wait a minute, I’ve got a plan!” I exclaimed quickly; for being Roxanne’s friend often makes me need to think very quickly indeed.  “You go on believing they’ll come, and your believing and my plan will be almost sure to get them.  I’ll have to go home right now.”

“Your plan won’t make me have to—­to let anybody give them to me, will it, Phyllis?” And Roxanne’s eyes were so soft with entreaty to spare that family pride that I had to swallow the inconvenient lump in my throat again.  I wish my eyes knew how to mist with tears like a girl’s ought to do instead of my choking up like a boy.  But I had my voice good and steady by the time I got opposite Father across his office table.

“And so,” he said, as he looked at me with an expression I feel on myself when I am going to take hold of some of the knots in Roxanne’s affairs, “I am to buy two barrels of apples here in the spring when they are gold nuggets, and help you pack up ten baskets of them for me to send to the furnace office force as a seasonable compliment, just so that stiff-necked young Byrd can carry his family pride along home in the basket with the apples for the making of six pies.  Right expensive pies, those!”

“Yes, Father, I know they are,” I answered firmly but pathetically.  “But I told you Lovelace Peyton and Roxanne are starving to save the crust; and my friends’ troubles are mine.  When he gets the chance to prove that steel explosion thing and people buy the process from him, they won’t need friends, or rather they will need friends more than they ever did, with all that money, but they won’t need apples.  I’m sorry it is being such an expensive thing for me to have a friend, but I must stand by her now if you will let me.”

“Steel!” said Father, and his eyes went into narrow slits in a way I don’t like, because he forgets I’m living.  And he was in one of those spells of turning himself inside himself to think, when I glanced at Rogers, his foreman at the furnaces, who was going over some papers at another desk.  And as I glanced at him Father came out of his inside and looked at him too.  I never did like Mr. Rogers.