“Oh, Phyllis,” said Roxanne, with the affection in her voice that I hope I am never going to get accustomed to, “nobody would refuse to do just like you want them to; and if they thought they could, you would make them see that it would be mean to do it.  They will all be delighted with the presents.  Can’t you see Mamie Sue turning that ring around and around on her finger?”

I had bought a ring with a lovely green set in it for Mamie Sue in memory of the many horsehair ones she has had to wear to piece out her memory, which must be fat and lazy like she is herself.  I am going to make my presentation apologies to them all tomorrow while we eat lunch out on the flat rock in the academy yard.  Sometimes we take a double lunch and invite the boys to come over and share it with us.  Roxanne and I have planned to do this.  She is going to let Uncle Pompey make some one of his favorites for us.  She is still indulging him in cooking materials, but thinks she will have to begin to starve again on June first.  The new invention has got as far as needing some chemicals already.  But it is best to climb away from an evil day upon the ever convenient rosy cloud and that is what we did as we walked along toward home.

But a strange thing happened, and funny, too.  I’m blushing over my awkwardness even as I write just to you, leather Louise.  But isn’t it enough to make me blush to think of that scarf-pin, with the moonstone and pearl in it, that I got to give Pink, sticking in the Idol’s necktie, if he hasn’t already taken it off to go to bed?  This is how it happened.  As we came along the street, almost as far as to Miss Priscilla’s, we met Tony and Mr. Douglass Byrd coming into town.  I never saw two people as much excited as they both were, and when they saw us they stopped talking and looked at us like we were a surprise to them.  For a minute I was startled, for I thought I heard Mr. Roger’s name spoken excitedly by Tony; and I have never got over the uneasiness about him, though the great secret robbery is a thing of two weeks past.  I can’t help anxiously wondering what they were talking about.  They stopped, and so did we, and of course Tony’s Scout eyes landed right on those twin pins Roxanne and I were wearing; and before I could stop her Roxanne had told him about the present-luncheon out on the flat rock to-morrow, and Snider and how I had to spend money.  I thought Tony was going to laugh and joke about it, as his former conduct would have been; but he got red in the face, shook as I put his pin into the lapel of his coat and spoke to me as if I were ill and needed sympathy, like he has been doing for a week.  That was upsetting enough; but when the Idol looked at me with real affection beaming from his glorious eyes and said: 

“Don’t I get a jewel, too, Miss Phyllis?” I almost doubled up into a heap on the pavement, and it was Roxanne who came to my rescue and held all of them out for him to take his choice.  He took the one I would rather have him take—­a beautiful pearl, like my friendship is for him, shadowed by the moonstone, which is my unworthiness.