Upon relentless questioning Burd admitted that Darry had lingered in Gibbonsville.
“You see, it was this way,” Burd tried to explain, as the girls showered him with questions. “We were not able to find out anything satisfactory about this girl of mystery who saddled you with an unpassable five-dollar bill, Amy, and so, when we got discouraged and said we were coming back before we had missed all the fun, Darry said we would have to go back without him.”
“But you shouldn’t have let him do anything so perfectly ridiculous!” said Amy, vexed. “There were two of you to one. Couldn’t you have made him come back with you?”
Burd chuckled.
“If you have ever tried to make your brother do anything he didn’t want to do, you know how easy it is,” he remarked. “I would just about as soon try to teach a wild elephant to dance. Nothing doing! When Darry acts like that the one thing to do is to give him his head.”
“But he must have been terribly interested in—that girl—to do a thing like this,” said Jessie, slowly, and Burd looked at her queerly. He seemed about to speak, but changed his mind.
“If you ask me,” said Fol, “I think he was just plain off his head.”
“And you didn’t catch sight of that awful girl?” asked Amy.
“We didn’t,” replied Burd, with just the faintest possible emphasis on the we.
“Then my five dollars is gone forever unless Darry succeeds in getting it back for me!”