“I was,” confessed Bart, flushing still more. “When I first saw her I thought her Vida, but she seemed to have grown more beautiful than ever, and I could not help looking at her. Then I discovered there was a difference—I saw it was not Vida but Isa. When I spoke to her she remembered me, and then—well, we became very friendly. I told her everything, and she laughed. She said Vida was too soft for anything—said the old aunt made Vida do anything she wished, and the girl hadn’t spirit enough to do as she desired. She said she would stick to a fellow if she loved him even though he were jailed for twenty years. There was spirit, dash, go about her, Merriwell! She fascinated me. I saw in her what I had missed in Vida.”
Frank shook his head in a very sober manner.
“My dear fellow,” he said, “do you remember Isa had a husband?”
“Yes, but he is dead,” said Bart, quickly.
“I know that; but do you remember the sort of fellow he was?”
“Of course; he was a counterfeiter.”
“Exactly, and Isa ‘shoved the queer’ for him. She didn’t do a thing to me the first time we met. I changed a fifty-dollar bill for her, and when I tried to pass the bill I came near being arrested. You remember that?”
“Sure.”
“I hardly think that is the sort of girl you wish to get stuck on, old boy.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Bart, rather defiantly. “She stuck to her husband through thick and thin, and I think all the more of her for it.”