"Oh, don't you trouble; you'd rather run on with Val and Barbara."
"I expect you don't want me. I know you think I've got no manners, and in that you're about right."
"No, I don't think anything of the kind," said Helen, laughing. "I shall be very glad if you will carry the basket, because I want to talk to you."
"Now for a lecture," said Jack to himself.—"All right, fire away!"
"Well," began the girl, looking round at him with a twinkle in her eye, "I want to know why you didn't set Val on to fight that boy this morning, instead of offering to do it yourself."
"Oh, I don't know! It was my own idea; besides, I'm bigger and stronger."
"You mean you did it so that Val shouldn't get hurt, in the same way that you grappled with those three fellows who were ill-treating him at school."
"Pooh! he didn't tell you that, did he? He always lets you know all the bothers I get into. You'll think I do nothing but fight and kick up rows; and," added the speaker, with a pathetic look of injured innocence, "I've been behaving jolly well lately."
"I think you're a dear, good fellow for defending Val," said Helen warmly, "and I've been wanting to thank you ever since."
"It was nothing. 'Twasn't half as much as he did for me when he climbed that tree and freed my bootlace. I wish he wouldn't go telling you everything that happens at school."