The girl laughed. “You remind me of what Charles Lamb says in one of his essays. We were reading it in school. Or maybe it was an anecdote about him the teacher told us. Anyhow, he said he didn’t like a certain man. A friend asked him if he knew him. ‘Of course I don’t,’ Lamb said. ‘If I did I’d like him. That’s why I don’t want to know him.’ Is it like that with you?” He considered this gravely. “Maybe so. I’m prejudiced against him on account of his brother.” “But that’s no fair,” the girl cried quickly. “And because of two or three things I’ve known him do.” “What things?” she demanded. Hugh did not care to discuss with Vicky the man’s amours. He shifted ground. “He’s selfish through and through. Thinks only of himself.” The girl’s eyes sparkled. “When you say that it just shows how little you know him. He’s the most generous man I ever met.” “He’s good lookin’, and he’s hail fellow enough. That’s not what I mean.” “And it’s not what I mean,” she retorted, her temper beginning to rise. “Two or three months ago he did the bravest thing I ever saw—risked his life for hours in a caved tunnel, to save the life of a ragged little boy. Was that selfish? Was that thinking only of himself?” “He’s game. He’ll go through,” admitted Hugh. “I didn’t mean that way.” Her stormy eyes challenged him. “Then just what _do_ you mean?” Hugh flushed. He did not find it possible to tell her explicitly just what he did mean. It was bad enough for him to be violating the masculine instinct against exposing another man to one of the opposite sex. He could not draw a bill of particulars about Dodson before an innocent girl. Moreover, what he had heard of the man’s escapades was merely town gossip—true enough, he felt sure, but not evidence that could be held good before an ardent young advocate like Vicky. “He’s not very scrupulous some ways,” he said lamely. “What ways?” McClintock felt himself being driven into a blind alley. He could not go on, nor could he turn back. “I wouldn’t want a sister of mine to know him too well,” was the best he could do by way of explanation. “That’s merely an expression of a personal feeling,” she flashed. “And since I’m not your sister it does not weigh with me. You come here and attack my friend. You say he’s selfish and—unscrupulous. I ask for facts to back what you’ve said.” Though he had been put helplessly in the wrong, Hugh felt that he was right at bottom. Vicky had no business to have this fellow on the list of her friends. He tried to break from the logic of the position into which she had forced him by an appeal to their old friendship. “I used to have a little partner named Vicky Lowell. We did not see much of each other, but we were tillicums. Oughtn’t I to warn her when I see her going with the wrong kind of man?” “And oughtn’t I to ask you to _prove_ to me he’s the wrong kind? Or must I take it for granted and give up any of my friends if you happen not to fancy them?”