"They've wired for dad and mother, and they're coming home to-night. Thought that before they got here I'd put you wise to something I want you to do."
Waiting for more, Tom sat silent, while the poor piggy face screwed itself up as if it meant to cry.
"Dad and mother think that because I'm so fat I'm not a sport. But they're dead wrong, see? I am a sport; only—only—" he was almost bursting into tears—"only the damn fat won't let me get it out, see?"
"Yes, I see. I now you're a sport all right, old chap. Of course!"
"Well, then, don't let them think the other thing, if they were to ask you."
"Ask me what?"
"Ask you what the row was about the other afternoon. If they do that tell 'em we were only playing nigger-in-the-henhouse, or any other snow game. Don't say I was knocked down by a lot of kids. Make 'em think I was having the devil's own good time."
Tom Whitelaw knew this kind of humiliation. If he had not been through Guy Ansley's special phase of it he had been through others.
"I'll tell them what I saw. You and a lot of other fellows were skylarking in the snow, and I went by and got you to knock off. As I had to pass your door we came home together; but when I found you were wet to the skin I advised Miss Ansley to see that you hit the hay. That's all there was to it."