"You can laugh as much as you like," said Letitia, flushing under his sarcasms, "but I know I'm right." "What!" he said, coming to a standstill, and staring into her face with a frown of exaggerated intensity, "you actually don't believe me?" "No, I don't," she retorted, doggedly combative. "After all these years, has my noble example of truth and probity made no deeper impression on you? Oh, Letitia, I couldn't have believed it of you!" "I don't care what you say," she repeated, "or how you try to turn it off. It's a real person, and I'm certain she's simply horrid. And if you take _my_ advice, the less you have to do with her the better." This was apparently too much for the sobriety of John Gault. In the loneliness of the street his laughter resounded deep and loud. Letitia looked at him with moody disfavor as he stood, his face flushed, his eyes suffused with moisture, and fairly roared. Letitia's eyes were threatened with a moisture of a different kind. "Oh, dear Tishy," he said, when his paroxysm was over, taking one of her hands and holding it tightly, "what a sage you are! How good of you to warn me! With you to take care of me, I ought never to come to any harm." "I guess you never would," said Letitia, with a little sigh. "Certainly I know enough to know that that woman is not a good person to trust--or even to know," added the mentor, with an accent of warning, and staring at him with large, cautioning eyes from under her hat-brim. Her companion was threatened with another outburst. "Oh, Letitia, don't be so _funny_," he said. "I haven't laughed as much as this for a month." He took her hand and, drawing it inside his arm, pressed it against his heart; then, looking down at her with eyes still full of laughter, but touched with tenderness, he said: "To think of Letitia Mason taking the trouble to give me good advice!" Letitia was mollified, less by his words than by his manner, which had in it that kindly camaraderie which made her feel happy and at ease. She withdrew her hand, laughing, and said, with a sort of shyness that was very charming: "I'll always give you good advice, if you'll promise not to laugh at me." Then they walked on, talking of other things, until the girl's spirits were restored to their normal attitude of a sedate, candid cheeriness. She grew quite talkative, discoursing to him of various small happenings in the house, and not noticing, in her recovered good humor, that his answers were short and his manner grave and distrait.