“A medal—­a—­a medal like Tony’s?” I gasped, as my heart stood still in awe of my own act.

“Why, of course, Bubble, you will get a medal,” said Tony, with the delight that some boys might not have shown at the idea of a girl’s getting up to the same height of distinction that they had attained.  “Now, will you be good and be the leader of the Kittens?”

“Say, Phyllis, when you raised Roxy from the ground, did you use the other muscles of your body or depend a lot on the shoulder lift?” Sam is not so big and strong as the other boys and consequently has the greatest regard for the strength that he hasn’t got.

I could only say that I didn’t know what I had lifted Roxanne up to catch the bottle with—­except prayers.

And while they all sat there in my garden and talked with Miss Priscilla about what she should get the Colonel to write to headquarters about me and about the dynamite and the steel and everything that was indirectly related to my disgrace, I sat quiet and prayed for some sort of strength to tell them that I maybe couldn’t be a Scout, and couldn’t have a medal and was hoping to move away from them to some other place to live, just as I had learned to like them better than I had dreamed one could like friends.

These boys and girls, including Miss Priscilla, haven’t been used to having things happen to them to distress them, and they are so warm-hearted and sympathetic that it makes it hard to say a thing to them that would hurt them.  But I couldn’t, couldn’t go on being a public and distinguished character, if my father were going to be a public character of another kind.  If people should say, “How his life must mortify his poor daughter, noble girl, with a medal and friends and things!” that would just put me on the other side of the fence from my own parent, who needs me more than ever, if he is sinful.  He isn’t, but what right have I to bask in public favor while he is in outer darkness?

Then just as I was going to decline to be a member of the Campfire and beg them all not to mention it to me any more, and try not to worry over me but to just forget about me, something so horrible came over the wall, in the shape of the news that Mr. Douglass Byrd brought, that I and they forgot all about the Scouts and Kittens and medals and all that.  The Idol was pale and quiet as he walked up the path to us, after skimming over the wall with one hand on it in a way that made Sam gasp with admiration.  He looked past Miss Priscilla and the rest of his old friends of inherited generations in Byrdsville and straight at me, his new—­but adoring—­one.

“Miss Phyllis,” he said, with such sadness in his voice that Mamie Sue gulped over a piece of fudge worse than usual, “Dr. Hughes has just examined Lovey’s eyes and it has hurt him very much—­also he thinks the sight has gone.  The youngster is crying and fretting for you and they don’t want him to do that under any circumstances.  The only hope for his sight will be for him not to inflame his eyes.  Will you come?”