"Fine, isn't it?" queried Tom Reade, scornfully. "The upper parts of your lungs are affected already, and you'll carry the work of destruction on rapidly. Alf, if you ever live to be twenty you'll be a wreck at best. Don't you know that?"
"I—-I have heard folks say so," nodded the boy.
"And you didn't believe them?"
"I—-I don't know."
"Why did you ever take up smoking?"
"All men smoke," argued Alf Drew.
"Lie number one. All men don't smoke," Tom corrected him. "But I think I catch the drift of your idea. If you smoke you think men will look upon you as being more manly. That's it, it?"
"It must be manly, if men do it," Alf argued.
"You funny little shaver," laughed Tom, good-humoredly. "So you think that, when men see you smoking cigarettes, they immediately imagine you to be one of them? Cigarette-smoking, for a boy of fourteen, is the short cut to manhood, I suppose."
Tom laughed long, heartily, and with intense enjoyment. At last he paused, to remark, soberly: