"You knew that stuff was drugged, and you fed it to us all," the boy, staring disgustedly on the three, half sobbed in his frenzy. He went to the bank's edge nervously, gesticulating. "It was a rotten trick, and I—well, I know that we've behaved like swine, and I'll say so. Yes, I don't care, I'll bawl us out. I'll bawl myself out—I'll——" Poor Dunstan flung out his arms in a passionate gesture.
"Aw!" they jeered. "Aw, say!" But the beringed Tawny also rose. He stood wobbling his canoe, stabbing at the water aimlessly, and the oratorical manner he maintained would have been funny, had not his very words revealed his befuddled condition.
"Well, I can tell you," he swore solemnly, "that you insult these ladies. Yes, sir! That's it, you insult 'em. If I had a gun I'd crown you—yes. That's it, you insult these ladies." Tawny's tongue seemed to cleave to the roof of his mouth; he wet his lips. With a surly squint of the eyes, he faced the youth on the bank.
"These ladies" did not seem particularly resentful on their own account. But the squalidness of it all, the silly and disgusting company in which he found himself, burned up into Dunstan's head. The boy almost hopped as he strode toward Tawny.
"Why, you hound!" he shrieked. "Who are you to say that, you moving-picture Polly. I insult 'em, do I? What did you do, you rotter? You brought that infernal gold tank of yours and this sick stuff; you knew those girls couldn't—couldn't—" Suddenly Dunstan, with long arm, reached forward to the seat by Gertrude. Snatching the candy box he tossed it into the creek, all its remaining chocolate-covered contents avalanching forth. He turned on the aghast Troop. "Aw," he breathed, "aw, you worsted monkey, you'll not bring candy like that again to nice girls. When you come here again leave your cute candy with the Chinks where it belongs."
But Tawny was now aroused. This was an attack on a sensitive point. Getting all his jewelry straight, pulling down his monogrammed white sweater, he rose, as one towering on the rostrum and stood feet planted wide apart in the wobbling craft. He met Dunstan's scorn with answering derision. "Yah—nice girls?" he queried in his turn. "Nice, what? Oh, come on! Nice girls, I'll say!" mimicked the sarcastic Tawny. He regarded his suave finger-nails and over them cast one eye on the recumbent Cinny, the other on the snake-wreathed Gertrude. He sneered back at his antagonist. "Nice girls; root for 'em by your lonesome. Nobody else'll help you. Nice girls, nothing!"
This was too much for Dunstan. The trip for him had been miserable anyway. He had found the party which he had entered with a slight measure of distrust to be entirely dominated by the Exquisite, and the subsequent unwholesome revelations of Cinny the lackadaisical, and Gertrude the importunate, had beguiled him into that dubious activity known as "being a good sport." Dunstan, out of a very clean straightforward heritage, felt somehow vulgarized, degraded. Perspiring, he waited like a crouching panther for the other man to meet him on shore.
"Cinny!" shrieked Gertrude, with her hard laugh. "Wake up, Honey, here's something worth while! Dunstan, the great chewing-gum champion, is going to meet Tawny Troop, the cutest little evader in the Hackensack Backwaters. Who holds the odds?" Cinny put up an indifferent hand to her fair hair, one of the cushions fell overboard, also a ukulele. Gertrude, with an exclamation, paddled over and rescued these; she leaned over to Cinny, saying sharply:
"What's the matter with you? Why can't you sit up and behave? Don't you realize that Sard and Minga are around here somewhere?" Gertrude leaned close over to the other girl, whispering very distinctly. "Cinny, we'll have to see that we are not any sportier than they are. Of course, no one knows what they've been doing. Dunce is really mad, and if he gets talking—you know that Minga is engaged to Tawny." But she spoke to deaf ears.
"Leave me alone," murmured Cinny.