“Oh, of course. I see what you mean now; yes, of course they do;” Stephen assented with alacrity.
“I might lend you my book about all these things,” George graciously observed.
“Oh, thank you!” said Stephen with sparkling eyes.
Meanwhile, the heroes had been pressing deeper and deeper into the “jungle,” and would soon be at their journey’s end. But at this critical juncture the sage’s evil genius again preyed upon his spirits, and he muttered with filial concern: “A boy’s first duty ought to be to take care of his clothes, and—”
“But it never is!” Steve broke in.
“—and here we are destroying ours!” the sage continued, disregarding Steve’s impertinent interruption.
“Never mind the ‘garments,’ George,” Charles replied. “Your old coat looks as if it might survive the frolics of a hurricane; so, ‘banish care and grim despair,’ as the second page of our new copy-book says.”
This was indiscreet in Charles. The aggrieved George was but a boy, and, naturally, he was angered. “Look here,” he exclaimed, “what is your object in dragging us through this dismal place? Where are we going? If you should lead the way to a python’s lair, should I be bound to tag blindly after you?”
This reasoning was forcible, and for a schoolboy, poetical. Will—knowing that their scheme would be disconcerted if George should turn back, and fearing that he would—bounded forward a little way, and then flung himself plump into a certain pile of brush.