ENGAGED TO INTERPRET FOR THE FRENCH.
"Where did you get that baseball?" asked Bonny Brooks, referring to one that Alaric was unconsciously tossing from hand to hand as they walked up town together.
At this the latter stopped short and looked at the ball in question, as though now seeing it for the first time.
"Do you know," he said, "I have been so excited and taken up with other things that I actually forgot I had this ball in my hands. It belongs to the fellow who gave me that breakfast and your dollar, besides telling me where to look for something to do. Not only that, but I really believe if it hadn't been for this ball he would never have paid any attention to me."
"Who is he? I mean, what is his name?"
"I don't know. I never thought to ask him. And he doesn't live here either, but has just come down from Alaska, and was going off on the one-o'clock train. I do know, though, that he is the very finest chap I ever met, and I only hope I'll have a chance some time to pay back his kindness to me by helping some other poor boy."
"It is funny," remarked Bonny, meditatively, "that your friend and my friend should both have just come from Alaska."
"Isn't it?" replied Alaric; "but then they are travelling together, you know."
"I didn't know it, though I ought to have suspected it, for they are the kind who naturally would travel together—the kind, I mean, that give a fellow an idea of how much real goodness there is in the world, after all—a sort of travelling sermon, only one that is acted out instead of being preached."
"That's just the way I feel about them," agreed Alaric; "but I wish I hadn't been so careless about this ball. It may be one that he values for association's sake, just as I did the one we left in that Siwash camp."