I nodded.
"Then it's all right," he said. "And I promise you one thing now: I'll never put you up against a proposition like that again."
He picked up his sandwich and dropped the matter from his mind. Morris stood still a minute longer, started to speak, stopped, and at last brought out what he had to say.
"And you won't think every man you meet is a beast, will you, Miss Iverson?" he asked.
I shook my head. I didn't seem to be able to say much. But it seemed queer that both he and Mr. Drake had said almost the same thing.
"Because," said Morris, "in his heart, you know, every man wants to be decent."
I filed that idea for future reference, as librarians say. Then I asked them the question I had been asking myself for hours. "Do you think Mr. Drake really was teaching me a—a terrible lesson?" I stammered.
The two men exchanged a look. Each seemed to wait for the other to speak. It was Gibson who answered me. He had opened the door, and was watching us with no sign of his usual wide and cheerful grin.
"The way you tell it," he said, "it's a toss-up. But I'll tell you how it strikes me. Just to be on the safe side, and whether he lied to you or not, I'd like to give Henry F. Drake the all-firedest licking he ever got in his life."
"You bet," muttered Hurd, through the last mouthful of his sandwich. Mr. Morris didn't say anything, but the bunches on his jaw-bones seemed larger than ever as he turned to his desk.