Jack made as much as possible of the remaining time that he was allowed to go to the office. He studied no lessons but the short Hebrew exercises David still gave him. He called at all the different offices where he had made friends, and spent a great deal of time in the hall, talking to Lee, who was soon installed in the building as elevator-boy. "My! but Lee has been fooling his father," exclaimed Jack to Bethany after his first interview. "Dr. Trent thinks he is such a little angel, but you ought to hear the things he brags about doing. He's tough, I can tell you. He smokes cigarettes, and swears like a trooper. He showed me an old horse-pistol he won at a game of 'seven up.' He shoots 'craps,' too. He has been playing hooky half his time. One of the hostlers at the livery-stable, where his father keeps his horse, used to write his excuses for him. Lee paid him for it with tobacco he stole out of one of the warehouses down by the river. You just ought to see the book he carries around in his pocket to read when he isn't busy. It's called 'The Pirate's Revenge; or, A Murderer's Romance.' There is the awfulest pictures in it of people being stabbed, and women cutting their throats. I told him he showed mighty poor taste in the stuff he read; and asked him how he would like to be found dead with such a thing in his pocket. He told me to shut up preaching, and said the reason he has gone to work is to save up money so's he could go to Chicago or New York, or some big place, and have a 'howling good time.'" It made Bethany sick at heart to think of the deception the boy had practiced on his father. Much as she trusted Jack, she could not bear to encourage any intimacy between the boys, and was glad when the time came for him to stay at home from the office. But in every way she could she strengthened her friendship with Lee. She brought him great, rosy apples, and pop-corn balls that Jack had made. No ten-year-old boy could be proof against the long twists of homemade candy she frequently slipped into his pocket. Sometimes when the weather was especially stormy and bleak outside, she stopped to put a bunch of violets or a little red rose in his button-hole. She was so pretty and graceful that she awakened the dormant chivalry within him, and he would not for worlds have had her suspect that he was not all his father believed him to be. One day she told David enough of his history to enlist his sympathy. After that the young lawyer began to take considerable notice of him, and finally won his complete friendship by the gift of a little brown puppy, that he brought down one morning in his overcoat pocket.