"Phil," he finally said, not in the voice he generally uses as if he
were speaking to his only son--but with a daughter tone in it--"you
have made good in Byrdsville, and I want to tell you that I'm proud of
you. I doubted whether you could do it. A bunch of such youngsters as
you have made friends with would be a test for any man, much less a
young woman. I'm their friend because they are yours, and pretty soon
I am going to prove it--like the sentimental fools that all fathers of
almost-grown daughters get to be. Go to bed, kiddie, and say an extra
one for Father."

Now all this is directly connected with the state I found the girls in
over at the Byrd cottage, when I finally dressed and got back again,
after stopping to bargain with Lovelace Peyton to go without the
four-o'clock cookies for half a tube of perfectly harmless tooth-paste
that he wanted for some kind of plaster to put on Uncle Pompey's heel,
which is always painful enough to occupy most of the snake-doctor's
time.

"No, I don't see why we should always tell Phyllis every interesting
thing that happens to us or is going to happen," Belle was saying in
such a decided tone of voice that it carried through the front door,
across the porch, and halfway down the front walk.

Disagreeability has a kind of force that knocks one down before
pleasantness hardly gets to him. I knew Roxanne said something in
answer to that; in my heart I knew, but I couldn't hear what it was
with my ears.

"Well," came Mamie Sue's voice, muffled through a piece of fudge she