Everybody now knows about the steel process that their distinguished citizen, Mr. Douglass Byrd, invented; and they all believe that Father has had it stolen and has left Byrdsville for some place where Colonel Stockell can’t find him, but they are none of them mad at me about it.  Of course, a load of sympathy can be as heavy to bear as one of disgrace; and when you have both the two to stagger under, you may wobble some in your conduct, as I have done these last two days.  First, though my reason is convinced about Father, there is something in me that just won’t believe it, and that keeps making me hope, and be passive in life, until he comes.  I say nothing about it to anybody, because the proof is too great against him, and I suppose it is really more daughterly love than hope.  Anyway, it is a precious feeling to me.

But one thing that troubles me is the way one friend’s sorrow can throw its shadow over the lives of many others.  It troubles me that Tony and Roxanne and the Colonel and some of the others are distressed about me, especially Tony.  He came to see me the morning after Belle had told me all about his scouting out the secret; and if it hadn’t been such an occasion I would have had to laugh at the collapsed way he looked, like he would fall to pieces if you touched him even very gently.  His grin was so entirely gone that his mouth looked only the size of an ordinary human being’s, and his eyes were shut down so dolefully that they were funnier than ever.

“Go on, Bubble, and shake me,” he said, with a comical sadness that was hard to bear with proper respect.  “Play I’m a doormat if you want to, but I cross my heart and body I didn’t mean to hurt you by letting my mouth overwork at the wrong time.  The Dumpling is just a sponge that sops up any old thing and lets any old body squeeze it out of her.  Please say you forgive me.”

“Why, Tony,” I said with difficult but becoming gravity, “don’t you know that I know that you didn’t mean to do anything to hurt me?” I couldn’t bring myself to mention Father or the shameful circumstances and I hoped he wouldn’t, either.

Tony is not a mere boy; he is a kind gentleman, also, and he ignored the subject we were discussing just as carefully as I did.

“Good for you, girliky, and I hope you fully realize that this little old burg of Byrdsville is all for you and anxious to hop rig-lit into your pocket,” he said most picturesquely, with relief at my not being hurt at him beginning to pull the corners of his mouth into the grin that he had put away as not suitable for the occasion.

A person who has the smile habit fixed on his face is a very valuable friend, and I was glad to see Tony put on his grin again.  There were two or three questions I wanted to ask him when he was in his normal condition, and I was just going to consult him about whether it wouldn’t be easier for the other girls and boys for me not to go to school—­anyway until they found Father and his innocence, or knew the worst about the prosecution and other punishments that would be given him; but before I could get the words arranged in my mind to say just what I wanted to say, he began on something like the same subject himself.