"That is just what I was talking about, Roxanne," I said, returning to my subject, which is the way my slow, methodical mind works in direct contrast to Roxanne's way of forgetting one thing because of enthusiastic interest in the next. "I don't see how you attend to all of this, this--" I paused to find a name for Roxanne's tumultuous household. "Menagerie," Roxanne suggested, with a laugh that floated out over the bed of ragged red chrysanthemums as sweet and clear as the note of the cardinal in the tall elm by the gate. "It's how you get your lessons and stay high up in your class I don't understand," I answered, still using my compliment tactics. "I've only known you less than a month, so it might be just luck that you got first mention for your character sketch of Hawthorne in the rhetoric class; but Tony says you always get it. You recite your German poems like they were English, and you feel them as much as you do Cassabianca. When do you study?" "Never," answered Roxy with a ruthful smile; "but, Phyllis, in school I listen. I have to. Just school hours are all I have; but I learn lessons while they are being recited, and write exercises and things in that one free hour I have at ten o'clock. If nothing like mumps or whooping-cough happens to Lovey this winter or next, I believe I will be ready to go to college with you and Belle and Mamie Sue and Tony and Pink. I've asked Miss Prissy to be sure and pray away those mumps and whooping-cough. I could manage measles." "But you are just one girl, Roxanne, with the usual number of hands and feet and eyes and things," I said, with an intention of bringing things to the point of the embarrassing hunger. But my point was reached in the conversation by Roxanne herself without my being quite ready for it. "Yes, I know that, but for a little while I have got to be several," she answered with a laugh. "Douglass has succeeded in the experiments out there in the back yard, but he can't be certain of the process until he tries it on a whole oven full of ore some night out at the furnaces. He just works every minute he can get, all night sometimes, and that is why I mend and darn and save and save--it costs so much for him to get the things he needs out in his shop. Of course, I never let Lovey or Uncle Pomp get really hungry, but Douglass and I do--that is--" Roxanne stopped, for the pain _would_ come out on my face. "Oh, Phyllis, not really hungry," she said mercifully, "but just tired of corn-bread and molasses. Douglass kisses me and I kiss him good-by in the morning and we pretend it is butter on his bread, like the poet said. Please don't feel bad about it, Phyllis. It was cruel for me to tell it when I am as happy as I can be."