“Oh, he is an old army officer, a major—­Major Arms, I believe his name is.  He’s somebody they’ve known a long time.  He lives in Kentucky, I believe, in the same place where the Carrolls used to live and where she went to school.  Oh, it’s a good match.  They’re just tickled to death over it.  Her sister feels rather bad, I guess, but, Lord! she’d do the same thing herself, if she got the chance.  They’re all alike.”  The boy said the last with a cynical bitterness beyond his years.  He sneered effectively.  He crossed one leg over the other and puffed his relighted cigar.  The last match had ignited.  Anderson said nothing.  He was accommodating his ideas to the change of situation.  Presently young Eastman spoke again.  “Well,” he said, in a tone of wretched conceit, “girls are as thick as flowers, after all, and a lot alike.  Bessy Van Dorn is a beauty, isn’t she?”

“I don’t think she’s much like the other,” said Anderson, shortly.

“She’s full as pretty.”

Anderson made no reply.

“I don’t believe Bessy would go and marry a man old enough to be her grandfather,” said the boy, with a burst of piteous challenge.  Then suddenly he tossed his cigar into the street and flung up his hands to his head with a despairing gesture.  “Oh, my God!” he groaned.

“Be a man,” Anderson said, in a kind voice.

“I am a man, ain’t I?  What do you suppose I care about it?  I don’t want to marry and settle down yet, anyway.  I like to fool with the girls, but as for anything else—­ I am a—­man.  If you think I am broken up over this, if anybody thinks I am—­ Lord—­” The young fellow rose and squared his shoulders.  He looked down at Anderson.  “There’s one thing I want to say,” he added.  “I don’t want you to think—­I don’t want to give the impression that she—­that she has been flirting, or anything like that.  She hasn’t.  Of course she might have been a little franker, I will admit that, for I have been there a good deal, but I don’t suppose she thought it was anything serious, and it wasn’t.  She was right.  But she did not flirt.  Those girls are not that sort.  Great Scott!  I should like to see a man venture on any little familiarities with them—­holding hands, or a kiss, or anything.  They respect themselves, those girls do.  They have been brought up better than the Banbridge girls.  Oh no, she hasn’t treated me badly or anything, and of course I don’t care a damn about her getting married, only I’ll be hanged if I like, on general principles, to see a pretty young girl throwing herself away on a man old enough to be her father.  It’s wrong—­it’s indecent, you know.”  Again the boy’s voice seemed bursting with wrath and grief and shame.

Anderson rose, went into the house, and was out again in a few seconds.  He had a cigar-box in his hand.  “Try one of these,” he said.  “It’s a brand new to me, and I think it fine.  I think you’ll agree with me.”

“Thanks,” said Eastman, with a sound in his voice like a heart-broken child’s.  He almost sobbed, but he took the cigar gratefully.  “Well, I must be going,” he said.  “Mother ’ll wonder where I am.  It was too deuced hot to go to bed, so I’ve been strolling around.  But I’ve got to turn in sometime.  These nights are too hot to sleep, anyhow.”