Anybody else but a great man, born of a great family like the Byrds, would have hurt my feelings by saying apologetic things about the tragedy between us, but the Idol just ignored it and I was made one of them again in their trouble.  Suddenly something popped into my mind that I could do to get the money for them to save Lovelace Peyton’s eyes and not hurt the family pride.  There is no doubt about it, when a girl gets so she can ask God to help her and think at the same time, she can find an inspiration when she needs it.  I may be in trouble and disgraced, but I’ve got Him on my side, and I can yet do things when my friends have such dire needs as a doctor.  I am afraid to write it even to you, leather Louise.

Suddenly I stood up beside Mr. Douglass, and looked down at Roxanne, and then up at him.

“Do both of you trust me enough to let me try to help if I do it with my own brains and not—­not my father’s money?” I asked.

For a moment they both looked at me, and then the Idol took my hand in his and looked me in the eyes just as square as I looked at him.

“Yes,” he said in a voice that grows more wonderful the more you love and know him, “you are one of us and you can plan with us all you are able to.”

“Yes, Phyllis; you have never offered or asked us to do anything we ought not to, and if you can think with us I know it will help,” Roxanne said, looking up at me trustfully.

Again I make record, Louise, that my course with the Byrd family pride has conquered it, even if I did display symptoms of it myself by staying away from the cottage so long.  I’m in a very queer position.  I have not made everybody understand that I can’t be a Girl Scout and I am a dishonored person in Byrdsville, with all sorts of distinctions offered me.  But this scheme I have thought up to get the doctor here has made me hold my breath so that I can hardly write, and I can’t worry over honors and medals and things.  I will do it!  I will!  Good-night!

CHAPTER X

Some people are so afflicted with energy that their days are twenty-five and a half hours long.  Mine are twenty-six just now.  If it were not for the fact that several hours each day I am under the influence of Roxanne’s repose, I suspect I would run down like a clock that has exhausted its mainspring.  Mamie Sue says that Belle says Roxanne is shiftless, but Belle is unable to distinguish shiftlessness from noble composure under difficulties.  I told Mamie Sue that it would be best for her to forget all that Belle has ever said to her; and she is trying.

Still, though I understand it perfectly, it is positively queer to hear Roxanne talk about what the great doctor is going to do for Lovelace Peyton’s eyes, and they haven’t done one thing about getting him here from Cincinnati.  The Idol has gone back to the obscurity of the shed, and I suppose he is making up some plan about the doctor, while he is working with his furnaces and retorts and things, but he hasn’t told one yet, and it is two whole days.  I do hope and pray that my plan will succeed without his having to bother with a common thing like money.