don't think she
sleeps too well, herself. Do you know what she's doing out here?"

"She came for her health."

"That isn't what I asked you, my dear. Do you know what she's doing?"

"No. She never told me."

"Shall I tell you?"

"No."

"It's interesting. Aren't you curious?"

"If she wanted me to know, she'd tell me."

"Indubitably correct, and quite praiseworthy," mocked the girl. "Never
mind; you know how to be staunch to your friends."

"In this country a man who doesn't is reckoned a yellow dog."

"He is in any decent country. So take that with you when you go."

"I'm not going," he asserted with an obstinate set to his jaw.

"Wait and see," she taunted. "So you won't let me send you books?" she
questioned after a pause.

"No."

"No, I thank you," she prompted.

"No, I thank you," he amended. "I'm an uncouth sort of person, but I
meant the 'thank you.'"

"Of course you did. And uncouthness is the last thing in the world you
could be accused of. That's the wonder of it.... No; I don't suppose it
really is. It's birth."

"If it's anything, it's training. My father was a stickler for forms, in
spite of being a sort of hobo."

"Well, forms make the game, very largely. You won't find them
essentially different when you go out into the--I forgot again. That
kind of prophecy annoys you, doesn't it? There is one book I'm going to
send you, though, which you can't refuse. Nobody can refuse it. It isn't
done."

"What is that?"

Her answer surprised him. "The Bible."

"Are you religious? Of course, a butterfly should be, shouldn't she?
should believe in the release of the soul from its chrysalis--the
butterfly's immortality. Yet I wouldn't have suspected you of a leaning
in that direction."

"Oh, religion!" Her tone set aside the subject as insusceptible of
sufficient or satisfactory answer. "I go through the forms," she added,
a little disdainfully. "As to what I believe and do--which is what one's
own religion is--why, I assume that if the game is worth playing at all,
there must be a Judge and Maker of the Rules. As far as I understand
them, I follow them."

"You have a sort of religious feeling for success, though, haven't you?"
he reminded her slyly.

"Not at all. Just human, common sense."

"But your creed as you've just given it, the rules of the game and that;
that's precisely the Bible formula, I believe."

"How do you know?" she caught him up. "You haven't a Bible in the place,
s