was very low--scarcely audible.

"You look good to me all right," said the boy heartily and he meant it.
He thought she looked prettier at the moment than she had looked at any
time since he had made her acquaintance.

Perhaps he was right. She had laid aside for once her mask of hard
boldness and was just a simple, humble, rather pathetic little girl,
voicing secret aspirations toward a fineness life had denied her.

"I say, Madeline," Ted went on. "You don't--meet other chaps the way you
met me to-day, do you?" Set the blind to lead the blind! If there was
anything absurd in scapegrace Ted's turning mentor he was unconscious of
the absurdity, was exceedingly in earnest.

"What's that to you?" She snapped the mask back into place.

"Nothing--that is--I wouldn't--that's all."

She laughed shrilly.

"You're a pretty one to talk," she scoffed.

Ted flushed.

"I know I am. See here, Madeline. You're dead right. I ought not to
have taken you out last night. I ought not to have let you meet me
here to-day."

"I made you--I made you do both those things."