"I'm not selling you at all!" protested Dory. "I wouldn't take twenty-five cents apiece for you, though that would make a dollar."
"You can't expect us to believe that you own such a magnificent boat as this, Dory, unless you tell us where you got her," said Corny Minkfield very seriously.
"I can expect it, and I do expect it," added Dory, taking the auctioneer's receipt from his pocket. "I shall prove to you that she is mine, and without saying another word."
Dory handed the receipt to Corny, and said nothing more. The sceptic read the paper out loud, and of course that settled the question. There was no room for a doubt after the reading of the receipt.
"Forty-two dollars!" exclaimed Corny, as he handed the receipt back to the skipper. "Judging by the cost of the Letitia, she ought to be worth four or five hundred dollars."
"Forty-two dollars is nothing for a boat like this," added Dick Short, whose mother was worth money, and therefore he had less respect for forty-two dollars than most of the other members.
"But where did you get the forty-two dollars?" asked Thad, who had hardly ever possessed even half a dime at one time.
"Haven't I proved that the Goldwing is mine?" demanded Dory rather warmly; for he did not want his fellow-members of the Goldwing Club skirmishing about in the region of the great secret of his lifetime. "All I have to say about it is, that I came honestly by the money, and I don't want any more questions asked."
Dory Dornwood, though he was rather wild, scorned to invent a lie to explain where the money came from, as perhaps some of his companions might have done under similar circumstances.
The other members of the Goldwing Club looked at one another; and Nat Long winked at Corny Minkfield, as much as to say "There is a cat in the meal somewhere." After the imperative warning from the skipper that nothing more was to be said about the forty-two dollars, no more questions were asked; but it was evident that the members all kept up a tremendous thinking on the subject. But even this matter became stale in a few minutes in the excitement of the hour.