"All talk--all wind, hot air!" the child said, indifferently, and she had evidently picked up the expressions from her elders. "A drummer--the fellow with the striped shirts that is always whistling and sells cloaks--he told me he was going to get me a doll and a baby-carriage, but he never came back--changed his rowt, so Aunt Jane said. But this doll's all right. Don't you think so, brother John?" "It will do till I get the other," he answered, and then he felt an impulse that he had never felt before. He bent down and put his hand caressingly on the almost matted hair, and she, not understanding, impatiently shook it off and went on with her work, her mouth now full of pins. There was a chair near by and he sat down in it, bending toward the child. Seldom had his boyishness been so apparent. He wanted to open his cramped heart to some one--why not to her? He wanted to hear his own voice applauding the things that were leaping, singing, shouting in the penetralia of his being. "Say, Dora," he began, clasping his warm hands between his knees, "can you keep a secret?" "A secret?" she repeated, letting her doll lie for an instant in her ragged lap and staring straight at him with growing interest. "Have you got one--a real one?" He had. His smile and generous nod admitted it. "Can you keep your mouth shut, that is what I want to know?" "Yes, yes!" she exclaimed, eagerly. "You ask Aunt Jane if I ever let your ma know--let her know--but never mind. I can keep one. Try me--that is if you are not kidding. I don't want any foolishness from you or anybody else. Life is too short." "Well, listen!" he began, and something in the blaze of his eyes, the tremolo of his erstwhile brusk voice, the warm look of his face, caught and held her attention. "Did you ever think the day would come when I'd go with a girl?" "Who, you?" Dora sniffed. "Now I _know_ you are kidding." "No, I'm not," he went on, riding the tide of his joyous self-emptying. "I have done it often since I went to Cranston. I got acquainted with one up there. Sam and I board with her pa and ma. You ought to see her, Dora. She is all right--as nice and pretty as any stuck-up girl in this town. Folks up there are different--very, very different from these down here who don't know that you and I are alive. They are polite and decent and civilized. Lord! somehow it makes me sick to think of living on here, but I reckon I will. Say, did you ever notice the stunning little cottage that Sam put up for Pete Carrol on the right-hand side of the street as you go down? But never mind that. What would you think if I was to tell you that before very long I might--" John was stalled. How could he express by mere lip and tongue the transcendental thing which so completely filled him? "What are you trying to get through yourself?" It was another of the child's picked-up expressions, and she leaned toward him with a slow leer of wonder. "What is your great secret?"