"Nonsense!"
"To be sure! Only Jim and I, trained and hardened in the ways of belief, are equal to a feat of that sort."
"I see no merit in believing that."
"I don't know that there is, especially—not in believing this particular thing, but the power for belief in general which it implies—you see I am unprejudiced."
"Why should you want to believe it?"
I should have known, without catching the glint of her eyes under the hat brim, that a Peavey spoke there.
"If you could see the thing once, you'd understand," I said, an answer, of course, fit only for a Peavey.
"At all events, you'll not keep it long." The words were Peavey enough, but the voice was rather curiously Lansdale.
"I have made as little effort to keep it as I did to acquire it," I said, "but it stays on, and I've a notion it will stay on as long as Jim and I are uncorrupted. But it shan't inconvenience you," I added brightly, in time to forestall an imminent other "Nonsense!"
Being thus neatly thwarted, she looked over my shoulder and bent to her oars, for we had again drifted toward the troubled waters of the dam.