Their manner was pugnacious and aggressive as they began to close in on the object of their regard. Andy believed he was in for a peck of trouble. He knew he could never hope to hold his own against the precious pair; and the worst of it all was that he had unwittingly given them a good cause for attacking him, owing to his carelessness in meddling with the wrapper of the steel cylinder before examining the label.
But Andy was game. He had a never-say-die spirit, even if not as clever a fighter as his cousin. No one could ever force him to give up so long as he had a single breath left with which to resist.
So he closed his hands, and assumed an attitude of defense. At this Sandy actually broke out into a roar.
“Look at that, would you, Puss!” he cried. “The beggar means to object to taking his medicine like a little man! All right; we’ll just have to make him open his beak and swallow the bitter pill. You give him the first dose, Puss. I’ll take care he don’t skeedaddle in a hurry!”
“Hold on a minute, fellows,” said Andy, as though striving to gain time.
“What you got to say now, hey?” demanded the Hollingshead boy. “Get it off your system in a big hurry, for we ain’t got any time to waste with you.”
“I’m going to prove what I said, and that we believed this was our cylinder, or else we wouldn’t have touched it,” declared Andy, who had an eye beyond the figure of Sandy, though the other did not realize the fact.
“Are, hey? Well, all I can say is that you’re going to have a mighty big job convincing us you’re innocent. Hurry up!” snarled Percy, anxious to start operations, and wipe out some little matters that burned in his brain, and which had to do with certain defeats in the past at the hand of a Bird boy.
“All right. While I dropped down here to remove this burlap, just to have something to do, and feast my eyes on the lovely cylinder we wanted so much, Frank went to see the yard clerk, and settle the bill.”
“Frank?” exclaimed Percy, uneasily. “Was he along with you?”