“Nothing at all,” laughed Roxanne; “but we are all just as superstitious as old Uncle Pompey, and because Douglass has a ‘feeling’ about Mr. Rogers, we all have to have it, too.  We make it a point to ‘feel’ with each other as both Douglass and I did when we just knew with Uncle Pompey that the white rooster would die from the lye soap that Lovey made him take in a pill.  It took Douglass and me two whole days to get Lovey to go on his honor about doctoring the chicken, but he finally agreed, if we would promise to let him do things to all of us whenever he wanted to.  Douglass lets him treat his head with cold water, which is just hard rubbing that he likes better than anything, every night before supper.  I’m wearing a yarn string around my ankle now for rheumatism that I haven’t got.  In fact we are all ‘on honor’ with Lovey, to save the ‘live stock,’ as Uncle Pompey calls himself and the chickens.”

Never having had any experience with little boys, I can’t say positively that Lovelace Peyton is a wonder, but I firmly believe it and his honor is entirely grown up while he is not quite five.  I’ve seen it work.  If he says he will or he won’t, he acts accordingly, no matter what happens to him or anybody else.  But he is careful how he promises and he leaves himself plenty of room to carry on what he calls his practice, to the uneasiness of himself and all the neighbors.  It cost Miss Prissy ten bottles, a pint of red paint, and a package of sulphur to buy the life of her gray cat for this year, but now she has no uneasiness about Tab at all.

I suppose if Roxanne and I sat down and talked one month straight through without eating and sleeping we might make up all the time we have lost out of each other’s company, at least just skim the cream off each other’s lives, but we’ll never get to it.  Too many people want Roxanne besides me, and I’m grateful to be allowed to be in the things she is in.  I try to keep the other girls from feeling that I am in the way, and I don’t believe they would feel that way at all if Belle didn’t still keep prodding them up with her distrust of my money.  I wish Belle just had a little wealth and would find out that it isn’t anything at all and can be forgotten without the least trouble.

Mamie Sue wants to like me and the two silent Willises do, also, but Belle dusts my gold into their eyes so they can just blink at me so far.  But the blinks get friendlier every day and I hope some shock will make them open their eyes to me like kittens do on the ninth day—­and their hearts, too.

The tallest Willis gave me the first peony that bloomed on their bush to take to my mother, and I caught a sight of her awkward heart that did me good.  I defied the nurse and told the white, white little thing on the pillow, that is all the mother I ever had, that one of my friends sent it to her, and I got a flash of a smile, such as I had never had before.  The nurse said just that little bit of excitement made her worse, and I’ve promised never to do anything but take my daily look at her again—­but—­she is my mother, even if—­