I should have to insist upon for you!"

"I'm not so fussy as all that," said Susan. "And it isn't fair that I
should have everything. Besides, Ambo, boys are much nicer than girls.
Honestly they are."

"Oh, are they! I'm afraid you haven't had much experience with boys!
Most of them are disgusting young savages. Really, Susan! Their hands
and feet are too big for them, and their voices don't fit. They're
always breaking things--irreplaceable things for choice, and raising the
devil of a row. Take my word for it, dear, please. I'm an ex-boy myself;
I know all about 'em! They were never created for civilized human
companionship. Why, I'd rather give you a young grizzly bear and be done
with it, than present you with the common-or-garden brother! But if
you'd like a nice quiet little sister some day, maybe----"

"I wouldn't," said Susan.

She was silent again for several moments, pondering. I observed her
furtively. Nothing was more distant from my desire than any addition, of
any age, male or female, to my present family. Heaven, in its great and
unwonted kindness, had sent me Susan; she was--to my thinking--perfect;
and she was enough. Whether in art or in life I am no lover of an
avoidable anticlimax. But Susan's secret purposes were not mine.

"Ambo," she resumed, "I guess if you'd ever lived in Birch Street you'd
feel differently about boys."

"I doubt it, Susan."

"I'm sure you'd feel differently about Jimmy."

"Jimmy?"

"Jimmy Kane, Ambo--_my_ Jimmy. Haven't I ever told you about him?"

Guilefully, persuasively, she edged her chair nearer to mine.

It was then that I first learned of Jimmy's battle for Susan, of the
bloody but righteous downfall of Giuseppe Gonfarone, and of many another
incident long treasured in the junior annals of Birch Street. Thus,
little by little, though the night deepened about us, my eyes were
unsealed. What a small world I had always lived in! For how long had it
seemed to me that romance was--approximately--dead! My fingers tightened
on Susan's, while the much-interrogated stars hung above us in their
mysterious orbits and---- But no, that is the pathetic fallacy.
Stars--are they not matter, merely? They could not smile.

"Don't you truly think, Ambo," suggested Susan, "that Jimmy ought to
have a better chance? If he doesn't get it, he'll have to work in a
factory all his life. And here I am--with you!"

"Yes. But consider, Susan--there are thousands of boys like Jimmy. I