"Wait a minute, I've got a plan!" I exclaimed quickly; for being Roxanne's friend often makes me need to think very quickly indeed. "You go on believing they'll come, and your believing and my plan will be almost sure to get them. I'll have to go home right now."
"Your plan won't make me have to—to let anybody give them to me, will it, Phyllis?" And Roxanne's eyes were so soft with entreaty to spare that family pride that I had to swallow the inconvenient lump in my throat again. I wish my eyes knew how to mist with tears like a girl's ought to do instead of my choking up like a boy. But I had my voice good and steady by the time I got opposite Father across his office table.
"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, Rogers, that whatever Miss Phyllis says in my office is strictly business and is to be observed as absolutely confidential."
As Rogers went out of the door I felt my heart sink in a queer way, and I turned to find Father looking at me sternly.
"Phil," he said, in the tone of voice I feel sure fathers use to their errant sons, "if you have another person's secret to guard, do it carefully and do not let the excitement of the moment make you let it slip."
"Oh, Father," I fairly gasped, "did I tell you anything about Mr. Douglass's secret that I ought not?"
"You told about all you know, daughter; but fortunately you didn't know enough to do much damage. I happen to know I can trust Rogers as myself. Now, go to your pie fixings, for I'm unusually busy."