"By the way you speak. Shake hands, won't you? I'm a native of the Old Dominion myself and it is good to see home folks."
Jack stretched out a grimy paw which was heartily shaken by her friend. "What's your name?" she asked.
"Well, I suppose a Chinaman might call me One Lung, though at home I am Carter Barnwell. Cart, some call me; Barn others. You see we put the cart before the barn, not before the horse, in my case. What's your name? It ought to be Amazon."
"That's a river in Brazil," returned Jack, "I am not named after any river. My name is Jacqueline Corner, but everybody calls me Jack, and I like it because it was my father's name." She was always very ready to give this explanation. "Is that your automobile?" she inquired.
"Yes, would you like to take a ride?"
"Oh, I'd love it, but perhaps I ought to ask my mother if I may go; she doesn't know you, you see." Jack paused in perplexity, then she said confidentially, "You know I shouldn't like to have her find out that I was fighting a boy in the street, at least not just yet."
The young man laughed. "Suppose I go up and interview her myself. I can find satisfactory references as to who I am, I think, and I reckon I can explain how I came to make your acquaintance without giving you away. I'll go around to the front gate, shall I?"
"Oh, please, and I'll go in the back way and tell Li Hung not to say anything about the fight. Come slowly so I will have time to tell him." She started toward the gate, then came back. "Will it be very deceitful," she said, "not to tell mother all about it at once? She mightn't let me go with you if she thought I had done wrong. I am trying not to do anything like that since Mr. St. Nick told me it was mean."
The young man looked down at her with a contemplative smile that had something of sympathy and something of admiration in it. "Suppose you don't come just yet," he said. "Perhaps if you stay back I can put the matter in such a way as to tell the truth and yet not make your part seem too dreadful. How will that do? Suppose you give me fifteen minutes."
"All right." Jack accepted the proposition thankfully and went in at the gate while her friend returned to his automobile whose "Honk! honk!" was presently heard as he turned the corner.