Lahoma and Wilfred instantly dropped as if shot, at the same time breaking into unexpected laughter that caused Willock's beard to quiver sympathetically. Bill Atkins, sour and unresponsive, stood as stiffly erect as possible, aided no little in this obstinate attitude by the natural unelasticity of age. The young man exclaimed boyishly, still smiling at the girl, "We're friends already, because we've laughed together." "Yes," cried Lahoma, "and Brick is in it, too. That's best of all." "_I_ ain't in it," cried Bill Atkins so fiercely that the young man was somewhat discomposed. "Now, Bill," exclaimed the girl reprovingly, "you sit right down by my side and do this thing right." She explained to the young man, "Bill Atkins has been higher up than Brick, and he knows forms and ceremonies, but he despises to act up to what he knows. Sit right down, Bill, and make the move." There was something so unusual in the attitude of the blooming young girl toward the weather-beaten, forbidding-looking man, something so authoritative and at the same time so protecting, at once the air of a superior who commands and who shelters from the tyranny of others--that Wilfred was both amused and touched. "Yes, Bill," said Willock, "make the move. Make 'em know each other." "This is Miss Lahoma Willock," growled Bill; "and this"--waving at the young man disparagingly--"SAYS he is Wilfred Compton. Know each other!" "I'm glad to know you," Lahoma declared frankly. "It's mighty lucky you came this way, for, you see, I just live here in the cove and never touch the big world. I believe you know a thousand things about the world that we ain't never dreamed of--" "That we have never dreamed of," corrected Bill Atkins. "--That we have never dreamed of," resumed Lahoma meekly; "and that's what I would like to hear about. I expect to go out in the big world and be a part of it, when I am older, when I know how to protect myself, Brick says. I'm just a little girl now, if I do look so big; I'm only fifteen, but when I am of age I'm going out into the big world; so that's why I'm glad to know you, to use you like a kind of dictionary. Are you coming back here again?" "I hope so!" he exclaimed fervently. "And so do I. In my cabin I have a long list of things written down in my tablet that I'd like to know about; questions that come to me as I sit looking over the hill into the sky, things Brick doesn't know, and not even Bill Atkins. You going to tell me them there things?" Bill interposed: "Will you kindly tell me those things?" "Will you kindly tell me those things?" Lahoma put the revised question as calmly as if she had not suffered correction.