"Oh, four or five years older than you." The boy evidently did not take this as a question. "She is unfortunately an heiress," he said. "Money has brought misery upon her, and through her, on me; for if she suffers, I suffer too. She used to believe in everybody. She thought men were even more sincere and upright than women, because their outlook on life was larger, and so it was easy for her to be deceived. When she came out she wasn't quite eighteen (you see we have no father or mother, only a lazy old guardian-uncle), and she thought everyone was wonderfully kind to her, so she was very happy. I suppose there never was a happier girl--for a while. But by-and-bye she began to find out things. She discovered that the men who seemed the nicest only cared for her money, not for her at all." "How could she be sure of that?" "It was proved, over and over again, in lots of ways." "But if she is a pretty and charming girl----" "I think she is only odd--like me. People don't understand her, especially men. They find her strange, and men don't like girls to be strange." "Don't they? I thought they did." "Think for yourself. Have you ever been at all in love? And if you have, wasn't the girl quite, quite conventional; just a nice sweet girl, who was pretty, and who flirted, and who was too properly brought up ever to do or to say anything to surprise you?" "Well," I admitted, my mind reviewing this portrait of Helen, which was really a well-sketched likeness, "now you put it in that way, I confess the girl I've cared for most was of the type you describe. I can see that now, though I didn't think of it then." "No, you wouldn't; men don't. My sister soon learned that she wasn't really the sort of girl to be popular, though she had dozens of proposals, heaps of flowers every day, had to split up each dance several times at a ball, and all that kind of thing. It was a shock to find out _why_. To her face, they called her 'Princess,' and she was pleased with the nickname at first, poor thing. She took it for a compliment to herself. But she came to know that behind her back it was different; she was the 'Manitou Princess.' You see, the money, or most of it, came because father owned the biggest silver mines in Colorado, and he named the principal one 'Manitou,' after the Indian spirit. I shan't forget the day when a man she'd just refused, told her the vulgar nickname--and a few other things that hurt. But I don't know why I'm talking to you like this. I wanted to get away from you yesterday, because I--don't care to meet people. Everything seems different though, now. I suppose it's because you saved our lives. I feel as if you weren't exactly a new person, but as if--I'd known you a long time." "I have the same sort of feeling about you, for some queer reason," said I. "Are we also to know each other's names?"