Stargarde smiled. “Too much red-tapeism,” laying her hand on his shoulder. “You all hear, boys; I’ll make this the nicest boys’ club in Halifax if you’ll throw away your tobacco, pipes, cigars, etc.”
“For how long?” asked the president cautiously.
“Say for a year. Then if you’re not healthier, happier boys, I’ll be greatly mistaken. Try it for a year, and if you are worse off without tobacco than with it, go back to it by all means.”
“A year isn’t long,” he replied, turning to his associates. “What is the opinion of the club?”
“Hurrah for Miss Turner!” said a lad, pressing forward enthusiastically.
“Make me an honorary member, Mike,” said Stargarde so quickly in the ear of the boy who let her in that he thought it was his own suggestion, and immediately proposed her. There was a show of hands, and the thing was done.
Stargarde thanked them, promised a supply of books and papers, then said earnestly: “There’s a little matter I wish to mention, boys. In the hall out here lies a man with some bruises that want attending to. Can some of you look after him for a few days? Keep him here and come to me for whatever you want, and take good care of him, for he’s a friend of mine.”
She had scarcely finished when two lads were detailed for duty and were stealing up the steps. Her friends were pretty well known, and when she had one in trouble, others of her friends were always willing to assist her.
When the boys found that the man was a foreigner and unknown to them, they were filled with an important sense of mystery. A course of blood-and-thunder novel reading had prepared them for just such an event as this, and for some days they took turns in guarding the unfortunate man, who had received even a worse pounding than Stargarde had imagined, nursing him secretly, and feasting him on the daintiest morsels that the Pavilion restaurant afforded.
“Oh, how good the poor are to each other; how good they are!” murmured Stargarde, as she languidly descended from the club room and rejoined her patient lover. “Yes, I am tired, Brian,” she said wearily, as she slipped her hand through his arm; “tired, but not with bodily fatigue. I am tired of the temptations to sin. It seems as if the Evil One is perpetually casting a net about our feet. No one is exempt. But the poor! oh, the poor! it is hardest for them. How can they be good when they are ground down by the perpetual struggle for bread in miserable surroundings, and worse than that, worse than that,” and her voice sank to a low wail, “the temptation that is always before them—nay, forced upon them—to drink deep and forget their misery.”