“After swearing over and over that you’d stick to me through thick and thin! After vowing you’d never play on the team unless I did! I didn’t ask for all those promises, but you made them.”
“And I meant to keep them when I made them, Scott——honest I did. But Sterndale came and offered me my old position, and so——”
“You went back on your word and quit me.”
“No, I’ve not quit you; I’m still your friend.”
“Bah!” cried Don, scornfully.
“I am!” palpitated Leon, eager to convince his companion. “I’ll prove it to you, too. You don’t think I went back because I want to help them win, do you?”
The doctor’s son did not speak, and Bentley hastened to go on:
“Not on your life! That wasn’t my little game. I went back because I can keep track of things better by standing in with the gang. I can watch Dolph Renwood, and I may get a good chance to give him a dig that will do him up. Can’t you see I’m liable to get a better chance at him now? I haven’t forgotten that he got Sterndale to drop me, and I’ll pay him back.”
“It’s a case of treachery on one side or the other,” declared Don. “If you’re not lying to me, you’ve gone back to betray the team, and so you’re a sneak, just the same.”
“Well, you beat anything!” gasped Leon, quite unable to understand the other youth. “You want to see them get it in the neck because Renwood is coaching them, and yet you turn up your nose at me when you think there is a chance that I may be able to give them the throw-down. What are you made of, anyhow?”