"I'd stick to a
pal like you through thick and thin, I would! What did you pull out like
that for anyhow?"

Smith chuckled.

"Well, sir, Susie, it fair broke my heart to start off without seein' your
pretty face and hearin' your sweet voice again, but the fact is, I got so
lonesome awaitin' for you that I just naturally had to be travellin'. I
ups and hits the breeze, and I has no pencil or paper to leave a note
behind. It wasn't perlite, Susie, I admits," he said mockingly.

"Dig up that money you're goin' to divide." Susie looked like a young
wildcat that has been poked with a stick.

Smith drew an exaggerated sigh and shook his head lugubriously.

"Child, I'm the only son of Trouble. I gets in a game and I loses every
one of our honest, hard-earned dollars. The tears has been pilin' out of
my eyes and down my cheeks for forty miles, thinkin' how I'd have to break
the news to you."

"Smith, you're just a common, _common_ thief!" All the scorn of which she
was capable was in her voice. "To steal from your own pal!"

"Thief?" Smith put his fingers in his ears. "Don't use that word, Susie.
It sounds horrid, comin' from a child you love as if she was your own
step-daughter."

The muscles of Susie's throat contracted so it hurt her; her face drew up
in an unbecoming grimace; she cried with a child's abandon, indifferent to
the fact that her tears made her ludicrously ugly.

"Smith," she sobbed, "don't you ever feel sorry for anybody? Couldn't you
ever pity anybody? Couldn't you pity me?"

Smith made no reply, so she went on brokenly;

"Can't you remember that you was a kid once, too, and didn't know how, and
couldn't, fight grown up people that was mean to you?--and how you felt? I
know you don't _have_ to do anything for me--you don't _have_ to--but
won't you? Won't you do somethin' good when you've got a chance--just this
once, Smith? Won't you go away from here? You don't care anything at all
for Mother, Smith, and she's all I've got!" She stretched her hands toward
him appealing, while the hot tears wet her cheeks. She was the picture of
childish humiliation and misery.

Smith looked at her and listened without derision or triumph. He looked at
her in simple curiosity, as he would have looked at a suffering animal
biting itself in pain. The unexpected outbreak interested him.

Through a blur of tears, Susie read something of this in his face, and her
hands dropped limply to her sides. Her appeal was use