“I don’t know.  Perhaps it’s because I don’t dress very well.”  Then, as he made a sorrowful gesture, she cut him off before he could speak.  “Oh, it isn’t altogether because we’re poor; it’s more I don’t know how to wear what I’ve got, the way some girls do.  I never cared much and—­ well, I’m not worrying, Roger!  And I think I’ve done a good deal with mamma’s dress.  It’s a very grand dress.  I wonder I never thought of wearing it until to-day.  I may be”—­she laughed and blushed —­“I may be the belle of the ball—­who knows!”

“You’ll want me to walk over with you and come for you afterwards, I expect.”

“Only to take me.  It may be late when I come away—­if a good many should ask me to dance, for once!  Of course I could come home alone.  But Joe Louden is going to sort of hang around outside, and he’ll meet me at the gate and see me safe home.”

“Oh!” he exclaimed, blankly.

“Isn’t it all right?” she asked.

“I think I’d better come for you,” he answered, gently.  “The truth is, I—­I think you’d better not be with Joe Louden a great deal.”

“Why?”

“Well, he doesn’t seem a vicious boy to me, but I’m afraid he’s getting rather a bad name, my dear.”

“He’s not getting one,” she said, gravely.  “He’s already got one.  He’s had a bad name in Canaan for a long while.  It grew in the first place out of shabbiness and mischief, but it did grow; and if people keep on giving him a bad name the time will come when he’ll live up to it.  He’s not any worse than I am, and I guess my own name isn’t too good—­for a girl.  And yet, so far, there’s nothing against him except his bad name.”

“I’m afraid there is,” said Roger.  “It doesn’t look very well for a young man of his age to be doing no better than delivering papers.”

“It gives him time to study law,” she answered, quickly.  “If he clerked all day in a store, he couldn’t.”

“I didn’t know he was studying now.  I thought I’d heard that he was in a lawyer’s office for a few weeks last year, and was turned out for setting fire to it with a pipe—­”

“It was an accident,” she interposed.

“But some pretty important papers were burned, and after that none of the other lawyers would have him.”

“He’s not in an office,” she admitted.  “I didn’t mean that.  But he studies a great deal.  He goes to the courts all the time they’re in session, and he’s bought some books of his own.”

“Well—­perhaps,” he assented; “but they say he gambles and drinks, and that last week Judge Pike threatened to have him arrested for throwing dice with some negroes behind the Judge’s stable.”

“What of it?  I’m about the only nice person in town that will have anything to do with him—­ and nobody except you thinks I’m very nice!”

“Ariel!  Ariel!”

“I know all about his gambling with darkies,” she continued, excitedly, her voice rising, “and I know that he goes to saloons, and that he’s an intimate friend of half the riffraff in town; and I know the reason for it, too, because he’s told me.  He wants to know them, to understand them; and he says some day they’ll make him a power, and then he can help them!”