I called Miss Priscilla to come quick as I saw her turning in the gate, and I took my hat and started down-town for the only bookstore in Byrdsville, which is kept in the post-office by the post-master.  If I couldn’t find a book about diseases there, I was determined to go and beg or borrow or steal one from the doctor himself.  But I found the very one I wanted.  It was called “First Aid in the Family,” and it described more accidents and diseases than it seemed possible for mortal man to have.  It was a large book and I was glad it cost five dollars.  The post-master said a man had left it there for him to sell six months ago, and that it cost too much for most of the people in Byrdsville to doctor by.  He offered to send it as soon as his boy came back, but I was in too much of a hurry to get back to Lovelace Peyton to wait, so I took it in my arms and started home with it.

On the way I met Helena Kirby walking down-town with the Petway boy, and they looked right into my face and passed me without speaking.  It might have been because I was carrying the big book, but I didn’t know Helena was that proud.  It hurts me for people to treat me that way without any reason but just dislike for me and perhaps because they think it wicked about Father’s money.

Just a little farther along I met Tony, and he took the book to carry for me, and I told him about Helena and the Petway boy looking at me and not offering to speak to me.  Tony got red up to the roots of his hair, being mad, and looked like he would just as soon as not eat them both alive.

“Now, see here, Phyllis,” he spluttered, “don’t you pay one bit of attention to what a pair of jolly idiots like those two do or say.  You are all right and we all know it.  No matter what happens, we’re for you.  See?”

“Thank you, Tony,” I said gratefully, but I didn’t “see,” and I was so puzzled over that “no matter what happens” that I felt weak in my brain.

In a few minutes still worse happened.  Belle and Mamie Sue saw us, and Belle forcibly crossed Mamie Sue over and went down the side street just to keep from meeting us—­that was as plain as day.  Tony got still redder and talked fast about Lovelace Peyton to keep from seeming to notice the way the girls had acted toward us.  I held up my head and did likewise.

Something awful has happened to me or about me in this town and I don’t know what; but it is my duty to put it all out of my mind now and give my thoughts and cheerfulness to Roxanne and Lovelace Peyton, while they need me so much.  I have made up my mind to forget it.

And it was fun to read to the prostrated medicine-man out of that book as I did all afternoon.  I began with abscesses and got almost as far as aneurism before the sun began to set.  I never saw anybody enjoy anything as much as Lovelace Peyton did each disease as I read about it; and the more bloodcurdling the description of the suffering and more awful the treatment, the more it interested him.