“But why? I work for my board. Everybody knows I was a stowaway on the San Francisco steamship, or can know it; I never tried to hide it. Did it make any difference with you fellows? With you or Reg Steele and your cousin Hec Price, who belong to the best people in the city, and the richest? No. You took me in the same as you took in Redtop and Sis Jones; and there’s more class to any of the fellows in your set than to me. Don’t I know that?”
“That’s where you’re off the boulevard, old chap. You’re in the class that has pluck and honesty and the capacity for friendship. That’s a class by itself. You notice Walter Buckman doesn’t figure large in high jinks engineered by Bess Carter or May Nell.”
“But why don’t the girls take in a friendless girl as you fellows took me?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Girls are different.” Billy could not answer that question. It was too large for him. It is too large for most people. We see a sweet young thing making herself ridiculous over the sufferings of a pampered cat, who yet will calmly stab to the heart with a cold stare some struggling girl who wears a last year’s frock and earns the bread she eats.
“I give it up,” Billy said after awhile. “But I’ll tell you one thing; if Miss Jones is O. K. otherwise, working for her board won’t make any difference to Bess Carter, nor to May Nell.”
“I know that. It’s why I am so anxious for Bess to invite her. Will you do it—get Bess to ask her?”
“Yes. That is, I’ll tell Bess about her, and May Nell too.”
“Thank you.”
“Gee! What a lever money is.”