o
know women like you. I wish to heaven--" He stopped, a lump in his
throat, and gazed into the sentimental night. Great heavens, what a
depraved character he really was! For the first time he saw himself in
the enormity of his sinning. It was not only the cigarettes and the one
black cigar, purloined from his father, but the orgies at penny-ante,
the occasional game of craps back of Mather's barn. Then he remembered
other damning episodes in his black record--the time he had gone into a
mathematics exam and read the formulas from Buster Bean's collar; the
night he had helped Sport McGinnis smuggle a bottle of beer in for a
welsh rabbit and swallowed a full third of the rank stuff. Then there
was an appalling record of evasions, turnings and twistings of the exact
and literal truth--

"You can't be altogether bad if you're so honeth," said Miss Jennie, in
whom the instinct was lively to bring the sinner home.

"I am. I am," said Skippy lugubriously.

"Can't I help--juth a little?"

"Would you, would you really?" he said eagerly.

"Let me--pleath."

The plump little fingers came forth and met the rough hand of the
sinner. Skippy squeezed them convulsively, not daring to trust his
voice, nodded twice and smiled bravely back in the moonlight to show
that the leaven of higher things was already beginning to work.

"How'd you get on with Margarita?" he asked Snorky when they retired for
the night.

"Margarita's a pippin!" said Snorky.

"I squared you all right."

"You bet you did! She came right up and fed out of my hand. But, say,
they swallowed it all right."

"What?"

"The dead game sporting life stuff."

"Yes, I know. Got a cig?"

"What? Oh yes. Get you one in a jiffy. But say. Go easy. The governor
and all that sort of thing, you know."

"Nerves sort of jumpy to-night," said Skippy languidly. "Need a few
whiffs to quiet 'em down."

It was something new in his life, a good influence. All his better
nature rose up in response. So summoning up his courage, he lit a
cigarette and tried to inhale--a desperate character, worthy to be
saved, certainly ought to inhale! It was nauseating. It stung his lungs
and set his head to reeling. He left the window and crawled over to the
bed where he lay weak but unconquered.

"By jinks, I will inhale, I'll inhale to-morrow!" he said, seeing always
the uplifting smile and the pure velvety eyes of Miss Jennie as the room
waltzed around him. "It's going to be awfully