it, but I was lonely—­sort of missed them down in here somewheres.”  He placed a hand over his breast.  “Did you ever feel downright hungry?  Well, that ’s just the way I used to feel, only a different kind of hunger, and me not knowing what it was.  But one day, oh, a long time back, I got a-hold of a magazine and saw a picture—­that picture, with the two girls and the boy talking together.  I thought it must be fine to be like them, and I got to thinking about the things they said and did, till it came to me all of a sudden like, and I knew it was just loneliness was the matter with me.

“But, more than anything else, I got to wondering about the girl who looks out of the picture right at you.  I was thinking about her all the time, and by and by she became real to me.  You see, it was making believe, and I knew it all the time, and then again I did n’t.  Whenever I ’d think of the men, and the work, and the hard life, I ’d know it was make-believe; but when I ’d think of her, it was n’t.  I don’t know; I can’t explain it.”

Joe remembered all his own adventures which he had imagined on land and sea, and nodded.  He at least understood that much.

“Of course it was all foolishness, but to have a girl like that for a comrade or friend seemed more like heaven to me than anything else I knew of.  As I said, it was a long while back, and I was only a little kid—­that was when Red Nelson gave me my name, and I ’ve never been anything but ’Frisco Kid ever since.  But the girl in the picture:  I was always getting that picture out to look at her, and before long, if I was n’t square—­why, I felt ashamed to look at her.  Afterwards, when I was older, I came to look at it in another way.  I thought, ’Suppose, Kid, some day you were to meet a girl like that, what would she think of you?  Could she like you?  Could she be even the least bit of a friend to you?’ And then I ’d make up my mind to be better, to try and do something with myself so that she or any of her kind of people would not be ashamed to know me.

“That ’s why I learned to read.  That ’s why I ran away.  Nicky Perrata, a Greek boy, taught me my letters, and it was n’t till after I learned to read that I found out there was anything really wrong in bay-pirating.  I ’d been used to it ever since I could remember, and almost all the people I knew made their living that way.  But when I did find out, I ran away, thinking to 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?”