“Not quite as far as we can see him, anyway. Still, a fellow can't find the stomach to bowl him over like a hare,—without a weenty bit of excuse, at least.”
“That's it! If he'd try to bolt, or would even jump on one of us, it would come far more easy. Look at him smile, now! And I hate to think of clapping such a bright-seeming lad in bonds!”
“Time enough for all that when he shows us cause,” quickly decided Waldo, with a vigorous nod of his curly pow. “Pity if a couple of us can't keep him out of mischief without going that far. And we want to pump the kid dry before uncle Phaeton gets back; understand?”
Bruno gave a slight start at these words, but his eye-glow and face-flush bore witness that the idea thus suggested had not been unthought of in his own case.
“Then you really think—”
“That there's more ways than one of skinning a cat,” oracularly observed Waldo. “Without showing it too mighty plainly, one or the other of us can always be ready and prepared to dump the laddy-buck, in case he tries to come any of his didoes. And, at the same time, we can be hugging up to him just as sweetly as though we knew he was on the dead level. Understand?”
Possibly the programme might have been a little more elegantly expressed, but Waldo, as a rule, cared more for substance than form, and his speech possessed one merit, that of perspicuity.
Having reached this fair understanding, the brothers dropped their aside, and moved nearer the young Aztec.
Ixtli gazed keenly into first one face, then the other, plainly enough endeavouring to read the truth as might be expressed therein, as related to himself. What he saw must have proved fairly satisfactory, since he gave another bright smile, then spoke in really musical tones:
“Good,—brother, now! That more good, too!”