said "all," I really meant Belle.

I don't know why, but somehow I hoped this hay ride would shake up
Belle's heart into being soft toward me. There are just eleven of us
in the junior class in the Byrd Academy: Tony and Pink and Sam and the
two Logan boys, while Roxanne and Mamie Sue and Belle and the two
Willises, with me, make up the girls. Eleven is a sacred number, and I
don't like for Belle and me to break the link by not being friends.

Tony is such a wise boy that he sometimes knows what a girl is
thinking about when she doesn't tell him. Most of the time he just
grins and leads us all on and we do tell him everything; especially
Mamie Sue, if we don't warn her beforehand and make her wear a
horsehair ring not to forget when he asks her questions. It makes
Belle mad for him to do Mamie Sue that way, and she calls it "prying";
but I think it is just kindness. How can you sympathize with your
friends' affairs if you don't make them tell you all? And sympathy
applied to life is like the gasoline in a motorcar, I think.

"Well, I should say they were all going," answered Tony
enthusiastically. "Even Belle, the beauty, can hardly wait for the
get-away. She is putting buttermilk on her freckles so that the moon
won't see 'em. Miss Prissy is over at Roxanne's now, trying to baste
Roxy together for the frolic."

"I think Roxanne always looks lovelier than anybody," I said quickly;
for I didn't think I could bear to have even Tony, when I know what a
great love he has for her, criticize Roxanne's shabbiness. They don't
any of them know what a heroine she is, and about the great cause.