"Oh," sighed Roxy, "some day he will find a real snake and then what
will I do?"

"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