“It was this way:  three of the boys came to my room to play cards—­because their rooms were watched.  I didn’t want to play—­oh, I’m none too good;”—­this in answer to something in her eyes that made him eager to tell her the exact truth—­“I’ve done it lots of times.  But that night I’d been thinking—­well, I just didn’t want to, that’s all.  Then they said I was afraid, and of course, that settled it.”

“Of course,” she agreed loyally.

“Wait; I want you to know it all,” he went on doggedly.  “When Martin—­he’s the Greek and Latin, you know—­slipped up on us, there was a bottle of whisky on the table.  He took down our names, and then he pointed at the bottle, and said, ’Which one of you does that belong to?’ Nobody said anything, and after it began to get sort of—­well, kind of monotonous, I picked up the bottle and offered him a drink, and put it in my pocket.  That settled me.”

“But it wasn’t yours,” she averred.

His smile was a rather ferocious grin.  “Wasn’t it?  Well, I took it, anyway; and I’ve got it yet.  Now see here:  that’s my berth over there and I’m going over to it.  You needn’t let on like you know me any more.”

“Fiddle!” 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.”