“Oh, Tony scouted it all out, though he didn’t mean to.  It was that awful smelly bottle Lovey gave your father.  Tony smelled it talking to Mr. Forsythe at the gate and then again in the shed.  He couldn’t connect them at first; but after a while he remembered, and then he began to suspect something awful—­he oughtn’t to have done it, but he did.  He followed your father and Mr. Rogers out to the furnaces one night and—­saw Mr. Rogers explain it to your father.  Then Mr. Forsythe went away the next morning and Douglass began to watch Mr. Rogers, and just three days after that he found him out at the furnace at night with a workman getting some of the ovens ready to try the experiments.  He couldn’t do a thing, and had to let them take his discovery and do as they wanted to.  Oh, truly Phyllis, it doesn’t make a bit of difference in our love for you.”

“How did Belle find it out, and why should they think Father is dishonest—­even if Rogers is?” I asked, still as cold as ice though my head seemed to be on fire.

“That is what is nearly killing Tony,” answered Roxanne, with a sob beginning to come in her voice; but she still held on to me tight, as stiff as I was.  “He and Douglass have known it for a week, and they never wanted anybody else to know about it on your account.  Douglass says he would rather give up ten fortunes than hurt such a friend as you have been to us, but Tony let the secret get out by accident, and now all the town knows it.  Judge Luttrell is getting out an injunction, even if Douglass won’t sign it, and the Colonel is getting ready to go on the next train to find your father and—­and remonstrate with him, he says.”

“Tony didn’t tell Belle about it on purpose, did he?” I asked to be sure.  “I couldn’t have stood that.”

“Oh, no, it was Mamie Sue that found out part, and told Belle, without knowing she had done it, just yesterday.  Mamie Sue says she wishes she never had any eyes or ears or anything to taste with, then maybe she would never get into trouble.  It is all on account of people thinking she is more stupid than she is.  Tony told Douglass right before her, on the street while she was giving both of them some of that fudge she had made to bring Lovelace Peyton, that Mr. Rogers had been in the telegraph office and had telegraphed your father that the experiment night before last was a success.  Tony is ambitious as a Scout should always be and has learned to read the ticking of the telegraph.

“’Anyway, Doug, it’s a cinch that you have made one of the greatest practical inventions of the day,’ Tony said, forgetting Mamie Sue entirely and so did Douglass, as he answered: 

“’That’s true, Raccoon, and if the fortune is another man’s by robbery, the brains are mine.  I’ll get my share yet.  Wait until this new idea gets into shape.’”

And then Roxanne went on to say that Mamie Sue said they hardly remembered her enough to politely thank her for the fudge, as they walked away talking.  She went on down to Belle’s; and when Belle began to say that Tony was stupid because he couldn’t read his Cicero, Friday, she tried to defend him by telling how he can read telegraphy even if he can’t read Latin.