"And so," he said, as he looked at me with an expression I feel on
myself when I am going to take hold of some of the knots in Roxanne's
affairs, "I am to buy two barrels of apples here in the spring when
they are gold nuggets, and help you pack up ten baskets of them for me
to send to the furnace office force as a seasonable compliment, just
so that stiff-necked young Byrd can carry his family pride along home
in the basket with the apples for the making of six pies. Right
expensive pies, those!"

"Yes, Father, I know they are," I answered firmly but pathetically.
"But I told you Lovelace Peyton and Roxanne are starving to save the
crust; and my friends' troubles are mine. When he gets the chance to
prove that steel explosion thing and people buy the process from him,
they won't need friends, or rather they will need friends more than
they ever did, with all that money, but they won't need apples. I'm
sorry it is being such an expensive thing for me to have a friend, but
I must stand by her now if you will let me."

"Steel!" said Father, and his eyes went into narrow slits in a way I
don't like, because he forgets I'm living. And he was in one of those
spells of turning himself inside himself to think, when I glanced at
Rogers, his foreman at the furnaces, who was going over some papers at
another desk. And as I glanced at him Father came out of his inside
and looked at him too. I never did like Mr. Rogers.

"Rogers," said Father briskly, "go telephone the Hill Grocery Company
to pack up ten large baskets of apples and send them over to the
office. You go over and give them to the boys and cover up Miss
Phyllis's track effectually by a speech of presentation. And remember,