"You didn't detherve it," said Miss Jennie an hour later when in the seclusion of the veranda she had restored to him the unspeakable stud. "You're an angel," said Skippy hoarsely. "I'll never, never forget that. That was white of you, awfully white!" "You didn't detherve it," repeated Miss Tupper with as much severity as can accompany the slightest of lisps and the eyes of a gazelle. "Don't be hard on a fellow," said Skippy miserably. "It was outwageous. You know, you didn't know us." How was he to lie to his saviour and benefactor and yet how betray a chum? "It did look bad," he said, momentarily at loss, "but honest, now, Snorky's intentions were nothing but honorable. Honest they were." "I with I could believe it," said Miss Jennie sadly. "I say, you must think I'm an awful rum sort," said Skippy, on whom the velvety eyes against the distant moon ripple on the water and the nearby night fragrance of the honeysuckle was beginning to work its charm. "Well, I suppose I am--" "Oh no." "A rotten good-for-nothing lot," said Skippy gloomily, falling easily into the new part and surprised to find what peculiar pleasure could be extracted from the role of the wayward. "No, no, you're not that bad," said Miss Jennie earnestly, "but I do think--well you've not been under the withest of influenthes, have you?" "I haven't had a chance," said Skippy desperately. "Everything has been against me. Guess no one cares what becomes of me." "I know," said the gentle voice. "It ith hard." "Look here, Miss Tupper," said Skippy, beginning to be convinced of his own predestination for the gallows, as he instinctively felt the sentimental value of the role. "Men like myself don't get a chance to know women like you. I wish to heaven--" He stopped, a lump in his throat, and gazed into the sentimental night. Great heavens, what a depraved character he really was! For the first time he saw himself in the enormity of his sinning. It was not only the cigarettes and the one black cigar, purloined from his father, but the orgies at penny-ante, the occasional game of craps back of Mather's barn. Then he remembered other damning episodes in his black record--the time he had gone into a mathematics exam and read the formulas from Buster Bean's collar; the night he had helped Sport McGinnis smuggle a bottle of beer in for a welsh rabbit and swallowed a full third of the rank stuff. Then there was an appalling record of evasions, turnings and twistings of the exact and literal truth-- "You can't be altogether bad if you're so honeth," said Miss Jennie, in whom the instinct was lively to bring the sinner home. "I am. I am," said Skippy lugubriously. "Can't I help--juth a little?" "Would you, would you really?" he said eagerly. "Let me--pleath."