"Bubble," said Tony, as he sat on the bench in our garden and fanned himself with his hat, "now that you have got the old town geared up and jogging along smoothly with your almost boylike energy, let's forget all about 'em and get ready a really humming Scout-Campfire ceremonial for the second night of commencement. I have got one gruesome idea I will be ready to tell you about to-morrow. We needn't let in Roxy or the Dumpling or the other Kittens until it is all fixed, for they will be frozen with fear at the very idea of what will be a Scout initiation, all right enough. But they'll do as you say when the time comes, for the whole bubble bunch, including Belle, since her algebra get-away, fall at any word you dope out to 'em from now on. Well done for you! You are not only a brick, Phyllis, but a whole wall of them that can be depended upon to line up to the mark." I wrote that down not to be conceited, but I want to preserve that opinion of me in you, Louise, because it means that I have, in a little way, deserved the happiness that has come to me. I came to this town a sad and lonely girl, with a great sorrow that had kept me from being like other people and with a great distrust of my father, who had had to be both Father and Mother to me. I have found friends and interests and excitement and adventure and sympathy and encouragement out here under that Old Harpeth Hill and I am always going to keep them. I hope I never will go one step out of Byrdsville as long as I live, though Roxanne has planned trips to every corner of the world for us as soon as the Idol has finished this next invention. The Byrds have to stay in the cottage until Father can build another house for us to move into. Of course they will go back to Byrd Mansion and reign in it as they have always done. But I smile to myself that one person got ahead of that stiff-necked old portrait--I did, and once she even seemed to smile down on me. This was the time she seemed to do it. We had all been talking about the plans for the new house down in the orchard, for Father and me, when Roxanne had to fly to Lovelace Peyton and Father tiptoed after her just to peep at him a second. That left the Idol and me alone for a few minutes. How I would have shuddered at the mere thought of such a thing happening to me a few months ago, but now it just seemed agreeable happiness. Through suffering I have grown bold, in my adoration of him. "Let him build his old house, Phyllis," he said with first a glance up at the old Grandmother Byrd and then one at me that was as bashful as I began all suddenly to feel again, when he took my hand in his. "He won't--won't keep you--that is, not many years--will he?"