“I reckon now, he saw all he wanted, and didn’t care about waiting to be introduced to such a gang,” Giraffe chuckled.
“Speak for yourself, Giraffe,” remarked Davy, disdainfully.
“I just can’t get over Bumpus, here, showing such a strong desire to grab these burglar fellers,” Giraffe went on. “What’s comin’ over him, do you think? We never used to think him daring or bold. He always said his heft kept him from joining in with the rest of the boys, when they skated over a ‘ticklish bender’ in the ice; and that it’d sure break with him. Same way about doin’ a lot of stunts. Now here he is, tryin’ to copy after Davy Jones in some of his monkey-shines; and makin’ the rest of us look like thirty cents when it comes to wantin’ to surround these here ferocious hoboes, and take ’em prisoners.”
Bumpus shrugged his fat shoulders, and tried to look indifferent.
“Huh! that’s because you never really knew what I had in me,” he said, calmly, though Thad could see the merry twinkle in his eyes; “It ain’t always the savage lookin’ feller that turns out a real hero, when the time comes around. Often the quiet, modest, retirin’ sort of chap jumps in, and saves the drownin’ child.”
“Oh; and that’s you, is it?” demanded Giraffe, as he settled himself down in his blanket, ready to try for a little sleep.
“Everything seems to be comin’ my way,” replied Bumpus, proudly. “All you have to do is to wait for the turn of the tide. I’m feelin’ just joyful. let me tell you;—all but one thing;” he added, hastily. “If I only knew about that letter business. Did I deliver it at the bank; or was I silly enough to forget, and lose it? Sometimes I c’n just see myself walkin’ in through the door of that bank, and deliverin’ the old thing; then it all gets mixed up, and for the life of me I just can’t say one way or t’other. If one of you only remembered seeing me go in, or come out; or if I said anything about handin’ it over, it’d ease my mind a heap, now, I tell you.”
Every time Bumpus got to thinking about that one trouble he lapsed into silence, because he did not seem to get any sympathy from most of his chums; Giraffe and Davy in particular being very apt to taunt him on his poor memory. Step Hen was not inclined to say very much, lest he draw the vials of the fat boy’s wrath down on his own head; for as we know, Step Hen had a failing himself in the line of forgetting what he had done with things he owned.
Once more the boys crawled under their blankets. Each of them had managed to manufacture some sort of a pillow. One had taken his clothes bag, and this example several of the rest copied, as suiting their wants exactly. Bumpus, lacking enough material, had gone out to the canoe and brought in his old haversack, from which he extracted the very rubber foot bath which he had mentioned to his chums as belonging to Smithy. This he crammed half full of other things, and declared it made as soft a pillow as anybody wanted.
“Better cover that rubber with a towel, or something like it,” remarked Thad.