“It’ll take more than this bunch to make me do that,” answered Pete, looking round in smiling defiance. “I’m no cigarette sucker!”
“He’s trying to get out of it!” declared Wilmot, triumphantly. “A football player and captain of the crew hasn’t the sand to light a piece of paper!”
“He’s just contrary-minded, that’s all,” Sumner threw in. “He won’t do it because we want him to.”
“Oh, if you want me to, that’s different,” answered Pete. “Anything to oblige such dear friends. Only I won’t take Steve’s match; he’s too forward. Here, Roger, give me one. I’ll trust you.”
Roger drew out his second box, took a match from it, and handed both to Talbot. Pete stooped to perform the task expected of him, read the inscription on the box, and decided instantly on the course to be pursued. At the first explosion he whirled about with the sputtering thing in his hand and plunged toward Wilmot, who sprang away from him with a yell of fright.
“Aha!” cried Talbot, dramatically, as he threw the spent match into the fireplace, “who’s the sandless one now? He’s afraid of his own innocent little matches!”
“They aren’t mine,” replied Wilmot, a little rattled by the fact that the laugh had turned against him. “They belong to Hardie, and he won’t tell where he got ’em.” This last statement was added in the hope that it might lead the conversation away from his own discomfiture. “Did you ever know such a hog?”
“Let him discover the place himself, as I did,” protested Roger. “He’s lived in the city all his life.”
“Don’t tell him,” advised Talbot. “He’s better off without ’em.”
And then the whole company fell to questioning Roger, as in a game, concerning the kind of shop at which the matches were procured. He answered all questions truthfully, though insulting doubts as to his honesty were cried aloud before the end of the list was reached, a list which began with possibilities such as groceries, drug stores, cigar stands, news stands, street fakirs, toy-shops; proceeded with dealers in firearms, fireworks, sporting goods—and tailed out into the most idiotic suggestions that foolish brains could originate. Wilmot capped the climax by declaring that it was from a school-supply house that the matches came. “They’re for use in school,” he shouted with glee; “that’s what they’re for!”