"Prove it," said Tom more quietly.
"I'll prove it by my whole life, if need be," Darrin went on warmly. "Tom Reade, I'll be glad to meet you when we're sixty years old, talk it all over and see who has been the better American through life!"
"Great!" laughed Dick Prescott approvingly. "That'll be a fine time to settle the question. And that time is—-let me see—-forty-six years away."
The other boys were grinning now, and Dave and Tom, catching the spirit of the thing, laughed good-humoredly.
"But this does seem a mighty long way home," Dan complained.
"I can show you fellows a shorter way, if you want it," Prescott proposed.
"We all live on Missouri Avenue. Show us," begged Hazelton.
"It's through the woods," Dick continued. "I warn you that you'll find some of it rough going."
"Then I don't know about it," Greg replied with fine irony. "We fellows are not very well used to the woods."
"It's twenty minutes of six," declared Dan, glancing at his watch. "Some of us are in danger of eating nothing but cold potatoes tonight if we don't get over the ground faster. Find the short cut, Dick."