"Are you sleepy?" he asked diffidently.
Garth's heart warmed to the act and the speech. "Why, no!" he said. "Believe I'll have another smoke before dropping off. Fire away, old boy!"
"Say, it's simply great to have somebody young to talk to," said poor Charley. "Somebody that understands; and that you can let yourself go with, and say whatever comes into your head to. Say, I never had such a good time in all my life as to-night. All the fellows up here—they're a good sort all right—but they're a rough, cursing lot. And of course, a fellow has to curse too; and talk big just to keep his end up—chuck a bluff, you know, or they'll think you're a molly. And I just love to laugh, and act foolish; and I always have to hold myself in. Sometimes I near bust!"
"I get like that myself," said Garth encouragingly.
There was something else on Charley's mind; but for a long time his tongue sheered off at every approach to it. Finally, rolling over, he hid a hot cheek on Garth's shoulder; and it came out with a rush.
"Say! I think she's the prettiest girl I ever laid eyes on!"
Garth's arm tightened about the boy's shoulders "She's the first white girl I've seen in nearly two years," he floundered on; "and girls meant nothing to me then. But I know darned well she's no ordinary white girl. Isn't it wonderful, the different ways she looks; and all that her voice seems to mean besides the words she says; and the way she walks and sits down; and the way she lifts her arm? Isn't it a pretty arm? And the finest thing about her is, she deals plain with you like a fellow; no silly fuss and make-believe, and hanging-back about her!"
If Garth liked the boy before, he was prepared to love him for this.
"Did you mark how she called me Mr. Landrum?" continued Charley eagerly. "She just did that to please me, I know. Didn't it sound funny? My chest expanded two inches, I swear it did! Wasn't she kind to me? She had no call to be so kind to me. It just makes me want to do something terrific! Oh, if I could only do something for her!—wouldn't I just be glad of the chance!"
He was silent for a while, tossing uneasily in his blanket. "Say, there's something I want to tell you," he blurted out at last. "I'm certainly good and ashamed of myself! There's a girl down the shore, her name is Julia; she's not a bad-looker for a breed. She came around my cabin sometimes. I was kind of lonesome, you see; and she was young, like me—"