that's the worst of it. I'm not sorry, the way I ought to be.
Besides, after what I've been these last two years--but you can't
understand; it would just be mockery--mocking God. I told you I wasn't
worth your while."

She smiled gravely. "You are such a boy, Tom. Don't you know that all
through life you'll have two kinds of friends: those who will stand by
you because they won't believe anything bad about you, and those who
will take you for just what you are and still stand by you?"

He scowled thoughtfully at her. "Say, Ardea; I'd just like to know how
old you are, anyhow! You say things every once in a while that make me
feel as if I were a little kid in knee-breeches."

She laughed in his face. "That is the rudest thing you've said yet! But
I don't mind telling you--since I'm to be your sister. I'll be seventeen
a little while after you're eighteen."

"Haven't you ever been foolish, like other girls?" he asked.

She laughed again, more heartily than ever. "They say I'm the silliest
tomboy in our house, at Carroll. But I have my lucid intervals, I
suppose, like other people, and this is one of them. I am going to stand
by you to-morrow morning, when you have to tell your father and
mother--that is, if you want me to."

His gratitude was too large for speech, but he tried to look it. Then
the porter came to make her section down, and he had to say good night
and vanish.

XIV

ON JORDAN'S BANK

Ardea saw cause for increasing satisfaction in Thomas Jefferson the next
morning, when they sat together in section nine to give the porter a
chance to rehabilitate ten and twelve.

He had grown so much surer of himself in the two years, and his manners
were gratefully improved. Also, she was constrained to admit--frank
glances of the slate-blue eyes appraising him--that he was developing
hopefully in the matter of good looks. The dust-colored hair of boyhood
had become a sort of viking yellow, and the gray eyes, so they should
not be overcast by trouble shadows, were honest and fearless.

Then, too, the Gordon jaw was beginning to assert itself--square in the
angle and broad at the point of the chin, with a deep cleft to mark its
center. Ardea thought it would not be well, later on, for those who
should find that jaw and chin opposing them. There would certainly be
stubborn and aggressive resistance--and none too much mercy when the
fight should end.

The improved manners were pleasantly apparent when th