"Who told you about it?"
"Why—Drew's sister." Jock's face looked stern and he gazed into space.
"It's a splendid idea, Jock." Joyce's interest was keen enough now. "Some one, even St. Angé's folks, should have seen how fine it is to keep the children away from the tavern. How we have let everything drift! Why Jock, if the boys and girls learn to hate the Black Cat; if they are given something good, why of course St. Angé is going to be another kind of place. Does Miss Drew help in teaching?"
"Does she?" Poor Jock smiled pitifully in his effort to appear unconcerned. "They sit at her feet lost to everything but what she tells 'em. Billy Falstar, before he left to be a camp fiddler, was a reformed brat. She had smote him hip and thigh, and finished him, as far as a career of crime is concerned. Do you know, he went up to see her with his red hair plastered down with lard until it was a dull maroon colour; his square cotton handkercher was perfumed with kerosene, and I tell you he was a sight and a smell to remember; but Drew's sister stood it without a word. She told me afterward that it was a proof conclusive—them's her words—of Billy's redemption.
"I saw the brat the day he started for camp. I tell you the ginger was all out of Billy. When he was obliged to swear he did it in whispers."
"Poor Billy! He's pretty young to begin camp life. There's good in Billy. I wish Mr. Drew would make Peter send him to school."
"That's what he's planning to do."
Soon after this, when Jock started to go, he said: "So everything's fit for a spell?"
"Everything Jock, until—"
They looked at each other mutely. Then Jock put his hand out awkwardly and took Joyce's.