“Well, I must say, girliky, that it was mighty considerate of you to be born about the full moon time of the first of May,” said Tony, with one of those funny flares of his eyes.  “Suppose you had opened your peepers along in December; we would have had to have an apple-roasting to celebrate for you, and I, for one, prefer the hay-lark.  Your parent is one fine old boy, and me for him.”

“Oh, Tony, I am so glad you like Father, and it was fine of him to have the hay ride for me.  Do you suppose they will all go?” When I said “all,” I really meant Belle.

I don’t know why, but somehow I hoped this hay ride would shake up Belle’s heart into being soft toward me.  There are just eleven of us in the junior class in the Byrd Academy:  Tony and Pink and Sam and the two Logan boys, while Roxanne and Mamie Sue and Belle and the two Willises, with me, make up the girls.  Eleven is a sacred number, and I don’t like for Belle and me to break the link by not being friends.

Tony is such a wise boy that he sometimes knows what a girl is thinking about when she doesn’t tell him.  Most of the time he just grins and leads us all on and we do tell him everything; especially Mamie Sue, if we don’t warn her beforehand and make her wear a horsehair ring not to forget when he asks her questions.  It makes Belle mad for him to do Mamie Sue that way, and she calls it “prying”; but I think it is just kindness.  How can you sympathize with your friends’ affairs if you don’t make them tell you all?  And sympathy applied to life is like the gasoline in a motorcar, I think.

“Well, I should say they were all going,” answered Tony enthusiastically.  “Even Belle, the beauty, can hardly wait for the get-away.  She is putting buttermilk on her freckles so that the moon won’t see ’em.  Miss Prissy is over at Roxanne’s now, trying to baste Roxy together for the frolic.”

“I think Roxanne always looks lovelier than anybody,” I said quickly; for I didn’t think I could bear to have even Tony, when I know what a great love he has for her, criticize Roxanne’s shabbiness.  They don’t any of them know what a heroine she is, and about the great cause.

“Course she looks good, ’cause she is the pretty child; but I always feel like carrying a needle and thread and a card of pins when Roxy is along.  And let me tell you the bug-doctor is about to burst out into the cold world from his aprons.  I know old Doug makes enough to rag the family, but Roxy is just behindhand getting rabbit skins to wrap the buntings in.  Lots of girls are poky about doing around.”

If Tony Luttrell had known how cruel that sounded, it would have broken his heart.  But I couldn’t tell him what a heroine Roxanne is and I just had to shudder in my soul to see her so misunderstood—­Roxanne, whose every day is just one big patch on life.

“It is lovely of Miss Priscilla to go with us,” I said, to change the subject.

“It would be a dry hay ride if the Miss Bubble wasn’t sitting in the very midst of the crowd and the wagon, with the Colonel prancing along beside on old White.  Your father is going to ride out with the Colonel and—­but that’s the surprise.  Being with your gingham gang so much, I am about to get the talks.”  And Tony put his hand over his mouth and moved away from me as if I had the scarlet fever.