Mrs. Barlow looked up from her sewing. "You and Arthur are very old friends, I suppose," she said, interrogatively.
This was just the question that Checkers had feared. "We went to school at about the same time," he replied, and immediately struck up an air, which, for the time, precluded further questioning. "At least, I suppose we did," he thought to himself, "as we are about the same age."
Meanwhile Pert and Arthur sat in the hammock outside in the radiant moonlight. It seemed to Arthur Pert had never looked so beautiful before. Her large, dark eyes were lustrous; and a silvery halo played about her soft, brown hair, while the pale light gave the clear skin of her oval face the pallor of marble, save for her lips, which were the redder by contrast.
"Such a nice little fellow!" she had exclaimed, as Sadie and Checkers went into the house. "Who is he, Arthur? Where did he come from?"
Arthur hesitated awkwardly. It had been his intention to confess to Pert all the circumstances of his last misadventure; but her few words in praise of Checkers now suddenly emphasized in his mind the thought that everything he had to tell was as clearly discreditable to himself as it was favorable to Checkers, and he had n't the generosity of nature to put the matter upon that footing.
Still, when upon several former occasions, he had confessed to Pert his weaknesses and sins, there had been a kindness in her ready sympathy, her gentle chiding and disapproval, which seemed to bring her nearer to him than she ever was during good behavior. He had found a certain desperate pleasure at times in telling her of his misdoings. It roused her, at least temporarily, out of her usual placid indifference toward him—an attitude to which he sometimes felt that her hatred would have been preferable.
As a school-girl of sixteen, with romantic tendencies, Pert had entered upon the task of reforming Arthur, with a childish belief that the love he professed for her, and which she, in a measure, returned, might be made a means to an earnest and successful endeavor upon his part to become worthy of her. But lapse after lapse had shaken this faith, and three years of experience found her with simply a sisterly pity for this weak young man, whose devotion was so abject that he ceased to interest her, and whose spasmodic vices were not of the kind which make some men so darkly fascinating.
And so Arthur hesitated, debating rapidly in his mind what to say, what to leave unsaid. "Well, it's a rather peculiar story, Pert, although it all happened naturally enough," he answered, after a little time. "I went up to Little Rock a few weeks ago to see a party on business. I found when I got there that he had gone to Hot Springs, and so I followed him over there. I wound up the business in a couple of days, but, as long as I was there, I thought I 'd stay a week or so and take a few baths.
"Well, one day in the cooling-room I struck up a conversation with the man lying next to me, and I 'll pledge you my word I never laughed so much in all my life as I did that morning at our little friend here, who told me a lot of his hard-luck stories.
"We dressed, and went and had lunch together, and he told me that he was dead, flat broke. He had been 'bucking the tiger,' and was waiting to hear from his uncle, to whom he had written for money. I met him again a few days later, and he told me he had n't heard a word as yet; that his trunk was in hock at the hotel, and altogether he was in the deuce of a fix. But he seemed so cheerful about it all that I could n't help taking a liking to him, and I proposed that he come to Clarksville with me, and take a job in the store, till he heard from his uncle, or had saved enough money to get straightened out again. He jumped at the chance, and I brought him along. He 's a first-class salesman, and jolly good company; but I 'm afraid he won 't stay with me much longer; he's getting tired of the place already. I shall be dreadfully lonesome when he 's gone.