“You’re not a cripple, are you?” he asked solicitously.
“I beg your pardon?”
“What’s the matter with you grabbin’ some of those bags and hikin’ down with ’em yourself?”
“You don’t understand,” the other said patiently. “Of course I shall carry my rod and racquets, but I don’t care to lug these heavy bags about myself. Just take them down to my tent like a good chap. I’ll pay you, naturally.”
Brick’s Irish temper, never far from the surface, blew up.
“Say, Mr. Dirk Astorbilt, or whatever your name is, you’ve got me all wrong! Where did you get the idea that Camp Lenape fellows were a bunch of Pullman porters, standin’ around waitin’ to carry bags for a ten-cent tip? Just because I happen to be washin’ out my duds so I wouldn’t look like a hobo, you must think I’m a bellhop or somethin’. Well, up here, mister, every man totes his own pack, see?”
“But—— Do you really mean that you are a fellow-camper, like myself?” the blond boy asked awkwardly.
Brick snorted, stuck his hands in his pocket, and stared pugnaciously at the other.
“Go climb a tent-rope!” he exclaimed rudely, and swaggered off down the hill toward the grove of pine trees that shadowed the white canvas dwellings of the Lenape campers.
In the shade beside the flagpole, he sat down on a log to cool off. With a blue bandana handkerchief he mopped his freckled brow and snub nose. A pine-scented breeze fluttered down the mountainside at his back and ruffled his unruly red hair. Perhaps he had been a little too hasty in taking affront at the new boy’s request. He sniffed the air, and its fragrance soon made him forget the unpleasant encounter with the strange boy in white flannels. For the thousandth time, he gazed over the spreading campus of Lenape, and peace descended on his fiery soul.