“Thank you, Doctor Byrd,” he said, just as gravely as he talks to the great surgeons and doctors that come to see Mother.  “Shall I report my condition to you to-morrow?”

“That medicine will work fine,” answered Lovelace Peyton; “but if it kills you, can I cut you open to see how you work inside?  When Douglass dies, I’m going to cut him into little pieces; he’s done promised.”

“Oh, Lovey,” was all Roxanne could say, while Father and the Idol both roared.

I never saw my father’s face so lovely as it was when he looked down on that little raggedy boy as we left him swinging on the front gate.  His heart is softening away from wealth to his fellow-man, I know.  And, as if it had not made me happy enough to have Father sitting and smoking with such a great character as Mr. Douglass Byrd, what should happen but for us to meet Tony at our front gate, coming to see Father especially?  They made me go in and wait on the front steps while they talked, because they didn’t want me to hear; and they both laughed so that Father tried to get out his handkerchief and succeeded in dropping the awful bottle Lovelace had given him, while Tony leaned against the fence and shook with chuckles at Lovey’s giving him such an awful smell.  Oh, if they were to elect my father an honorary member of the Raccoon Patrol like the Colonel and the Idol, I could not stand the happiness.  Tony’s friendship for him gives me one of the deepest joys that ever came to me.  Tony’s high sense of honor cannot help but impress Father.

This little town of Byrdsville, that nestles down in a hollow of the Old Harpeth Hills on the old pioneer road they called the Road to Providence, when the first settlers traveled it from Virginia to Tennessee, is the most wonderful place in the world, I think, and I wish Father could have been born and reared here, for then he wouldn’t have strayed into a career of making money.  Nobody in Byrdsville ever did, and Mr. Douglass Byrd will be the first one.  And besides having the soul of honor and loving-kindness in it, Byrdsville looks like it might be one of the outposts of heaven, where tired souls can come to rest before going up the shining ladder.

[Illustration:  I never saw my father’s face so lovely]

All the houses are old-fashioned, with wide doors for welcoming and with vines running over the chimneys and up to the eaves, while blooms and buds tumble over the walls and burst from the gardens into the street.  Yes, I think Byrdsville might be called the smile-place on the old earth’s round face.

But to return to Father and Tony at the front gate; only I didn’t.  Father went on down the street and Tony came in to sit on the steps and talk to me.  I wouldn’t be so frivolous and growny as to have a boy come sit on my front steps talking to me like a “suitor,” as Belle thinks it is smart to have; but Tony is different.  He’s my friend, and I would almost as soon talk to him as Roxanne.