never intend to. The sight of him makes me so shy that it is agony." I
didn't in the least mind confessing such a feeling to Roxanne, because
she is the "Idol's"--it looks nice written--sister and will
understand.

"And all the time he is afraid that he will have to back up against a
fence sometime to hide his patches from you," laughed Roxanne in such
merriment that anybody with any sense of pleasant humor would have
joined her at the thought of the Idol and me dancing a minuet to keep
out of each other's way.

The way Roxanne feels about her brother is the way I feel about Father
even after I saw that article in the magazine. He is my father and
nobody is wholly bad. I always will love him devotedly and go to him
with my sorrows.

At night in the study of Roxanne's forefathers, before the log fire
where the fifth old Colonel Byrd used to entertain Andrew Jackson, I
told him all about that terrible starving that is going on down at the
little cottage beyond the garden.

"Well," said Father, in the voice I still think so noble and good and
that still comforts me, "we'll have to see to all that. When I bought
this place from young Byrd, I liked him better than any youngster I
had met in a long time, and I offered him a better place out at the
furnaces than he could fill. I have tried to have him advanced twice,
but the young stiffneck says he won't have more than he earns. Still
he gets a hundred a month and things ought not to be so tight down at
the Byrd nest. Wonder what he does with the money? He's not a gamer, I
take it."