"Well, Jappie," she laughed in silvery tones, "how long you are!"
He took her little ringed hands in his and looked at her silently. Agnesia was the beauty of the family. Her golden curls fluffed bewitchingly about her face and her wide blue eyes smiled affectionately.
"You are grown, too, Aggie. I have been thinking of you as a very little——"
"Mercy!" she broke in. "Please, Jappie, don't drag that awful name to light. When I went to the new home, they mercifully killed Agnesia. I have been Mabelle Hastings so long that I had almost forgotten Aggie Herron. I gave that hideous name to your friend," she flung a gold-flashed smile at Bill, "because you had no sister Mabelle in the old days. Our folks made a bad selection of names for their progeny. And why Jasper? Why didn't they put the James first? It sounds so much more human."
"Not a bit of it!" declared Bill. "What is there about James? This town had to have its Jap Herron. No substitute would have made good."
She slipped a glance through her long lashes at Bill.
"I called him 'Jappie,'" she confided. "I was a lisping baby and couldn't say 'Jasper.' Dear old Jappie, how he slaved for me! And I was a tyrant, demanding service every minute of the day."
Jap's face clouded. "Aggie is a bigbug now," came surging into his memory, as a wizened face obtruded itself between the laughing eyes of his sister and his own. The girl noted the swift change. She took his handy her voice quivering with appeal.
"I know what you are thinking about," she said. "But I could not help it, Jappie. We don't have to keep up the pretense before Mr. Bowers. He knows the worst, I take it. Jappie, you may not remember, but when Mrs. Hastings adopted me, my mother had reported that she would either turn me out or give me to the county. Afterward my foster-mother took me away from Happy Hollow when she saw that our mother was bringing disgrace on all of us. She sacrificed her home and moved far enough away so that no smirch could come to me. You don't know, brother, and I would never want you to know the dreadful things she did. I had not heard from her since she married that drunken brute, until she came to the house one hot day. When she found no one at home, she laid down on the porch and went to sleep, drunk and unspeakably filthy. She was there when we returned with a party of friends. Can you imagine it, Jappie?"
Jap nodded his head slowly.