Joan waived this compliment. One would suppose him Emily's discovery instead of her own!
"How did your brother happen to know him?"
"Oh, boys always know each other—they're so much more democratic than girls. Horrid little snips we used to be, remember?—turning up our noses at any other children who didn't go to dancing school?"
"I did not go to dancing school myself," remarked Joan quietly. "My mother taught me."
"Then your mother must have been Queen of the Fairies!" said her friend, rather prettily. "Johnny and Archie first met, I believe, upon the field of battle. There used to be a continuous warfare on in this neighborhood between what were known as the Alley Gang and the Av'noo Kids. We expected Johnny to be brought in any day a mangled corpse—he being the leader of the Av'noo Kids. One day the Alley Gang caught him and his cohorts rather depleted as to numbers, and were naturally engaged in wiping them off the face of the earth, when the paper-boy came up on his wheel. With a whoop he dropped wheel and papers and joined in the fray. The Alley Gang were getting the worst of it when policemen arrived—it seems some windows had been smashed. The other boys scattered, but the rescuer dared not desert his papers and so got caught; and Johnny came panting home to get Father to bail him out of jail. That's the first we heard of Archie Blair."
"Odd that he didn't side with the Alley Gang, wasn't it?" commented Joan.
"Why, don't you see?—the Av'noo Kids were getting the worst of it. That's Archie!..."
Joan decided to be a little kinder to her protégé the next time she saw him. It is an odd fact that we frequently do not appreciate our possessions until others appear to value them unduly.