“Go on, now,” Panama urged. “I’ll be waitin’ right here for her answer.”
His words again changed the boy’s demeanor, breaking down the last barriers of objection.
“Don’t keep me waitin’ too long, will ya?” Williams begged. “Hurry on your way now!”
Lefty stopped when he reached the front of the tent, lighting upon a perfect alibi to defer the painful ordeal he was about to face. “Wait a minute,” he said. “This is no time to propose to a girl. You can’t ask her a serious thing like that just when you please. You’ve got to have things right. You know, moonlight, atmosphere, music and all that bunk. I’ll ask her to-night. What do you say?”
“There you are! That’s the difference between us,” Panama boasted with profound admiration for his friend’s mental capacity. “If it was me, I’d run right over now and she’d probably hand me the bum’s rush! Don’t you see how much I need your help? That’s what that education stuff does for a guy!”
“All right, all right, now let’s forget about it until to-night then,” Lefty said impatiently. “I said I’d do it, so it’s as good as done!”
Panama shrugged his shoulders and walked over to his cot, disappointed with the boy’s unsympathetic attitude. Suddenly something struck him and he looked at the other man with a grave expression of doubt. “Say, Lef!”
“Now what’s the matter?”
“Nothin’, only—well, suppose she does say the word,” the sergeant speculated as he scratched his head, “then what am I supposed to do?”
“Run over, take her in your arms and ask her when the day is to be!”