"If she is like that"--Dora was precociously and pessimistically wise for one so young, the fact being due, no doubt, to the tutelage of the two worldly women who were her sole companions--"if she is like that, it looks like some lazy feller would have got her before this. Aunt Jane says it takes money and clothes and lots of things to keep any man coming regular." "There is--there _was_ another fellow," John put in, unctuously, "but she turned him down. Lord! Lord! it broke him all to pieces! She just somehow couldn't tie to him. She told me so out of her own mouth." "What is she like?" Dora then demanded. "What does she look like?" "Don't ask me," John smiled. "I can't tell you. When we walk together she strikes me about here," his hand on his left shoulder. "She has blue eyes, brown wavy hair, a pretty mouth, and a nose with a cute little tilt to it. There are bits of brown freckles on her wrists and cheeks, but they don't matter. If anything, I like them. I wouldn't rub them off. Folks don't say she is pretty--even Sam don't; but why I can't see, for she is simply stunning, and you'll say so, kid, when you see her." "Well, I won't tell-- I won't tell," Dora promised, returning with lowered interest to her rag things after the flight with him into his empyrean. Here a voice sounded from the window of Mrs. Trott's room up-stairs. "Dora, is that John down there?" "Yes'm. He's just got back." "Well, tell him to come up here right away." The order did not need repeating. John stood up, the old practical frown settling on his face. "I wonder what the ---- she wants?" he growled, with fierce emphasis on the omitted word. "I thought she was asleep." "Come on up, John; I want to see you," Mrs. Trott's querulous voice rang out again, and without replying he turned away. He wore his best suit of clothes, had recently shaved the fuzz from his face, and looked rather more manly than formerly as he strode through the doorway and up the rickety old stairs. Reaching the upper floor, he turned into his mother's room, unceremoniously pushing the door open and standing on the threshold, just as Mrs. Trott, in a soiled wrapper, was getting back into bed after having been to the window. Her hair was in curl-papers, and the little bristling tufts gave to her face an uncouth, bleak look and left her penciled brows to a barren waste of forehead. Her cheeks were still rouged from the night before. A brazen necklace, recently doffed, had left dark streaks on her powdered bust. "Why didn't you come on in?" Mrs. Trott demanded, irritably. "What did you sit down there and talk with that brat for?" "Oh, I don't know. What do you want?" He frowned in his turn, and all but growled.