I dried myself in the sun, using its morning heat for a towel....
As I sat there on a rock, I heard a crackling of twigs, and Penton thrust his way through the intervening branches to my bare rock and my bare self ... I hastily, I do not know why, put on my bathrobe....
"Hello, Penton."
"Good morning, Johnnie. I felt you'd be down here for your morning bath ... I came to have a serious talk with you."
"Yes?"
"I want you to take calmly what I am about to say!"
Penton was much impressed with my stories of tramp days and tales of adventure on land and sea, which you may be sure my sense of the dramatic had encouraged me to lay on thick—and he, plainly, did not desire any heat in the discussion which was to follow....
"Recently it has come to my attention that there has been a lot of gossip about you and Hildreth ... your conduct together." He drew his lips together tightly, settled himself for a long siege....
"Why, Penton," I began, protestingly and hypocritically,—I had planned far other and franker conduct in such an emergency—but here I was, deprecating the truth—
"Why, Penton, God knows—"