ewing. "You and Arthur are very old
friends, I suppose," she said, interrogatively.

This was just the question that Checkers had feared. "We went to
school at about the same time," he replied, and immediately struck up
an air, which, for the time, precluded further questioning. "At least,
I suppose we did," he thought to himself, "as we are about the same
age."

Meanwhile Pert and Arthur sat in the hammock outside in the radiant
moonlight. It seemed to Arthur Pert had never looked so beautiful
before. Her large, dark eyes were lustrous; and a silvery halo played
about her soft, brown hair, while the pale light gave the clear skin of
her oval face the pallor of marble, save for her lips, which were the
redder by contrast.

"Such a nice little fellow!" she had exclaimed, as Sadie and Checkers
went into the house. "Who is he, Arthur? Where did he come from?"

Arthur hesitated awkwardly. It had been his intention to confess to
Pert all the circumstances of his last misadventure; but her few words
in praise of Checkers now suddenly emphasized in his mind the thought
that everything he had to tell was as clearly discreditable to himself
as it was favorable to Checkers, and he had n't the generosity of
nature to put the matter upon that footing.

Still, when upon several former occasions, he had confessed to Pert his
weaknesses and sins, there had been a kindness in her ready sympathy,
her gentle chiding and disapproval, which seemed to bring her nearer to
him than she ever was during good behavior. He had found a certain
desperate pleasure at times in telling her of his misdoings. It roused
her, at least temporarily, out of her usual placid indifference toward
him--an attitude to which he sometimes felt that her hatred would have
been preferable.

As a school-girl of sixteen, with romantic tendencies, Pert had entered
upon the task of reforming Arthur, with a childish belief that the love
he professed for her, and which she, in a measure, returned, might be
made a means to an earnest and successful endeavor upon his part to
become worthy of her. But lapse after lapse had shaken this faith, and
three years of experience found her with simply a sisterly pity for
this weak young man, whose devotion was so abject that he ceased to
interest her, and whose spasmodic vices were not of the kind which make
some men so darkly fascinating.

And so Arthur hesitated, debating rapidly in his mind what to say, what
to l