"Weally, Miss Morse, I am too exhausted to speak about it—weally!" gasped Purt.
"And it was the only sport Purt would go into," grunted Chet. "He could get somebody to run his boat for him, you see. All he had to do was to sit tight and hold his ears on."
Purt felt affectionately for his ears—they stuck out like sails from the side of his head, "trimmed flat across the masts"—and said nothing. He could not retort in his present condition of mind and body. But his schoolmates talked on, quite ignoring him.
"What were you two boys doing out in the Duchess this afternoon, anyway?" demanded Laura. "I thought you were going to see the game between Lumberport and the East High team?"
"Why," said Chet, hesitating, looking at Lance, "if we tell you, you'll keep still about it—all you girls?"
"Of course," said Jess.
"All of you, I mean," said Chet, earnestly. "No passing it around with the usual platter of gossip on the athletic field this evening."
"How horrid of you, Chet!" cried Josephine Morse.
But Laura only laughed. "We can keep a secret as well as any crowd of boys—and he knows it," she said.
"Well," said her brother, squatting before the campfire, that was now burning briskly, and spreading out his jacket to the blaze, while the legs of his trousers began to steam. "Well, it's about Short and Long."