quit it for good. I 'll tell you about it sometime, and how
I 'm back at it again.

"Of course she seemed a real girl when I was a youngster, and even now she
sometimes seems that way, I 've thought so much about her. But while I 'm
talking to you it all clears up and she comes to me in this light: she
stands just for a plain idea, a better, cleaner life than this, and one
I 'd like to live; and if I could live it, why, I 'd come to know that
kind of girls, and their kind of people--your kind, that 's what I mean.
So I was wondering about your sister and you, and that 's why--I don't
know; I guess I was just wondering. But I suppose you know lots of girls
like that, don't you?"

Joe nodded his head.

"Then tell me about them--something, anything," he added as he noted the
fleeting expression of doubt in the other's eyes.

"Oh, that 's easy," Joe began valiantly. To a certain extent he did
understand the lad's hunger, and it seemed a simple enough task to at
least partially satisfy him. "To begin with, they 're like--hem!--why,
they 're like--girls, just girls." He broke off with a miserable sense
of failure.

'Frisco Kid waited patiently, his face a study in expectancy.

Joe struggled valiantly to marshal his forces. To his mind, in quick
succession, came the girls with whom he had gone to school--the sisters
of the boys he knew, and those who were his sister's friends: slim girls
and plump girls, tall girls and short girls, blue-eyed and brown-eyed,
curly-haired, black-haired, golden-haired; in short, a procession of girls
of all sorts and descriptions. But, to save himself, he could say nothing
about them. Anyway, he 'd never been a "sissy," and why should he be
expected to know anything about them? "All girls are alike," he concluded
desperately. "They 're just the same as the ones you know, Kid--sure
they are."

"But I don't know any."

Joe whistled. "And never did?"

"Yes, one. Carlotta Gispardi. But she could n't speak English, and I could
n't speak Dago; and she died. I don't care; though I never knew any, I seem
to know as much about them as you do."

"And I guess I know more about adventures all over the world than you do,"
Joe retorted.

Both boys laughed. But a moment later, Joe fell into deep thought. It had
come upon him quite swiftly that he had not been duly grateful for the good
things of life he did possess. Already home, father, and mother had assumed
a greater significance to him; but he