camel, because he and it are blunt, I suppose; and it must be just the
same with such a rich girl. Poor child, I am so sorry for her; but we
must be very careful."

"Why, Belle," said Mamie Sue, in a voice that is always so comfortable
because she is nice and fat, "Roxy said she was going to like her a
lot, and she's got Roxy's lovely house while Roxy has to live in the
cottage, which is just as bad as moving into a chicken coop after the
Byrd Mansion. If Roxy likes her, it seems to me we might. She didn't
turn us out of house and home, as the almanac says."

"Don't you see that Roxy has to be nice to her, because if she isn't
we will think it is spite about the house? Roxy can't show her
resentment, but her friends can. I'm a friend."

Belle uses words and talks like a grown person in a really wonderful
way. She is the smartest girl in the rhetoric class and, of course,
she knows more than most people, and Mamie Sue realizes that. So do I.
I saw just how they all felt about me, and I don't blame them--but I
just wish every time Roxanne Byrd smiles at me that I didn't have to
make myself stop and remember that she does it because she has to.

"But I believe Phyllis is a nice girl," Mamie Sue said. Mamie Sue
reminds me of a nice, fat molasses drop, with her yellow hair and
always a brown dress on.

"The city is an awful wicked place, Mamie Sue, even if it is only just
a hundred miles away. Let's don't think about the poor thing." Belle
answered positively, and they went out of the door.