le!" she said, making a face at him. "You say that like a little
boy trying, oh, so hard, to be a man. I'll believe you are just as bad
as bad can be, if you want me to; but you mustn't be rude to me. We
don't play cards or drink things at Carroll College, but some of us have
brothers, and--well, we can't help knowing."

Tom was soberly silent for the space of half a hundred rail-lengths.
Then he said: "I wish I'd had a sister; maybe it would have been
different."

She shook her head.

"No, indeed, it wouldn't. You're going to be just what you are going to
be, and a dozen sisters wouldn't make any difference."

"One like you would make a lot of difference." It made him blush and
have a slight return of the largeness of hands; but he said it.

She laughed. "That's nice. You couldn't begin to say anything like that
the day you came up to Crestcliffe Inn. But I mean what I say. Sisters
wouldn't help you to be good, unless you really wanted to be good
yourself. They're just comfortable persons to have around when you are
taking your whipping for being naughty."

"Well, that's a good deal, isn't it?"

Again she made the adorable little face at him. "Do you want me to be
your sister for a little while--till you get out of this scrape? Is that
what you are trying to say?"

He took heart of grace, for the first time in three bad days. "Say,
Ardea; I'm hunting for sympathy; just as I used to a long time ago. But
you mustn't mix up with me. I'm not worth it."

"Oh, I suppose not; no boy is. But tell me; what are you going to do
when you get back to Paradise?"

"Why--I don't know; I haven't thought that far ahead; go to work in the
iron plant and be a mucker all the rest of my life, I reckon."

"How silly! You are nearly eighteen, now, aren't you?--and about six
feet tall?"

"Both," he said briefly.

"And all the way along you've been meaning to be a minister?"

He gritted his teeth. "That's all over, now; I reckon it's been over for
a long time."

"That is more serious. Does your mother know?"

He shook his head.

"She mustn't, Tom; it will just break her heart."

"As if I didn't know!" he said bitterly. "But, Ardea, I haven't been
quite square with you. The way I told it about the cards and the whisky
you might think--"

"I know what you are going to say. But it needn't make any all-the-time
difference, need it? You've been backsliding--isn't that what you call
it?--but now you are sorry, and--"

"No;