However, the Sortwell boy had plainly decided to be non-committal until he had a better line on my feelings in the affair.
“I don’t want you to be mad because I talked it over, Ross. I stood up for you!”
“But did she come asking?”
“We-e-ll, I guess she must have asked—or—or something! Anyway, it came up in talk—somehow—”
Confound his haziness!
“And of course I stood up for you. It was only right! I told her how you tried to bust up the Skokums! I said you threatened to bat out the brains of the whole of us if we didn’t stop cutting-up. I told her that they hadn’t ought to have arrested you that night, for you was trying to stop us from raiding her father’s house to grab that detective. You said something about a home being a castle—or—or something. Anyway, Ross, I did the best I knew how—I ain’t so much good in talk as you are. Honestly, I did the best I could to put you straight when she asked. Yes, I reckon she did ask.”
I was looking at him with such rapturous expression that his face cleared of uncertainty regarding my feelings.
“Sure, she must have asked, for I wouldn’t go to blart-ing that around, making the rest of us out as pirates, unless she had pinned me down. I reckon she did just that! Pinned me down. But I was glad to help you out that much!”
It came to me with a rush of sentiment that all I had done that day for the Sortwell boys had been fully paid for long in advance, and I was sorry because a whole lot of my actions had really been dictated by my selfishness and my desire to show off.
I reached across the table and took his hand.