"We are not going to court, not by a jugful," put in Buddy Girk. "If we give up the gal that's got to end it. Otherwise, we don't give her up, see?"
"But you'll have to give her up later on," put in Tom. "And the longer you keep her the more you will have to suffer for it, when it comes to a settlement."
"Let's give her up," whispered Mumps to Dan Baxter. To the credit of the toady let it be said that he was heartily sick of the affair and wished he had never entered into it.
"You keep your mouth shut!" answered the former bully of Putnam
Hall. "My dad knows how to work this racket."
"Somebody said something about being hungry," continued Arnold Baxter significantly, "I imagine Miss Stanhope is as hungry as any of us, if not more so."
"Do you mean to say you are starving her!" cried Dick indignantly.
"I mean to say that she will have to starve just as much as we do," was the unsatisfactory answer.
"And you have run out of provisions?"
"We have run out of provisions for her, yes."
"That means that you won't give her any more, even though you may have some for yourselves? You are even bigger brutes than I took you to be," concluded the elder Rover boy bitterly.