"If you'll go, I'll share half with you."
"Does your father say you may have the boat?"
Daniel nodded his head, and went on explaining how they would manage. "We shall have to sail out farther than we did last time. The lilies are thick at the other end; and I want to start half an hour before school begins, can't you get away somehow?"
"I don't know as I shall go," faltered Jimmy, looking down at Gip. "I don't believe mother'll let me leave school."
"Bother the school," exclaimed Dan. "I don't believe in keeping boys studying all the time. If I were you, I wouldn't say a word to my mother about it. You got off real slick last Tuesday."
"I'm afraid teacher'll send Ralph Lane again to know why I wasn't at school."
"Oh, that was rich! Ralph told me about it, and how he saw you skulking round the barn. How did you get off with the teacher?"
"I managed," said Jimmy, ashamed to confess even to this wicked boy that he had told an out and out lie, as he himself had to call it; and tell his kind teacher that he went on a visit with his mother.
"Well," urged Daniel, "you can manage again. If you don't want to go, say so, and not be fooling all day about it. There's enough fellows would be glad of the chance to go and earn two or three dollars by selling lilies."
"Two or three dollars, I didn't know 'twould be so much. I'll guess, I'll go."