"All right then," said Jardin, shrugging his shoulders. "Suit yourself, of course! Perhaps we will meet later." He turned and started back toward the hotel, leaving the boys looking after him.
CHAPTER IV
"Well, I will say he's a peach!" said Frank.
Bill made no reply.
"Don't you say so?" pressed Frank. "Don't you think he is a peach?"
Bill, forced to answer the question, made a frank but reluctant reply.
"No," he said. "I think he is a pill." He shook his head.
"You are a queer one!" said Frank. "It don't look as though you had any sporting blood in you. I suppose because he smokes naughty cigarettes—"
"It isn't that," said Bill, frowning. "He is just plain foolish to smoke. Why, he is undersized and underweight now for his age, and every time he smokes he checks his growth. It is up to him. I bet he has had it explained to him a million times by each teacher and tutor he has ever had just how smoking will harm him and dope up his brain, so if he wants to miss out on athletics and all that, and look like a boiled mosquito in the bargain, let him go to it. I don't care. It's not that I don't like about him. It is the way he thinks and talks. Where does he live when he is at home?"