“It’s plain you’ll have to choose between them and me.”
“I shall choose, and I’ll stand by you, Hooker!”
The fellow lifted a tear-wet face and gazed at Frank wonderingly.
“You do not realize what it may mean,” he said. “You do not wish to be shunned by all your friends. I am nothing to you, and your friends are everything.”
“When they are in the right, they are everything; but when they are in the wrong, like this, nothing. Don’t worry for me, Hooker. I’ll bring them round.”
“How can you?”
“I’ll find a way. They shall accept you as their friend.”
“Impossible!”
“We shall see. But that is not all.”
“What more?”