“Excellent! That will be a magnificent joke,” exclaimed Clyde. “I’m with you. I suppose you all ran away from the ship when you found the tyranny was too much for you.”
“O, no! We didn’t run away. We wouldn’t do that. Somehow, by an accident, our boat was stove, and we were carried off by a steamer. Then we couldn’t get back to Christiansand before the ship sailed, and we were obliged to come across the country to Christiania, you see.”
“I see,” replied Clyde, knowingly. “But you don’t mean to go back to the ship—do you?”
“Certainly we do,” protested Sanford.
“Then you are bigger spoonies than I thought you were.”
“But we are afraid the ship will be gone before we can reach Christiania.”
“O, you are afraid of it.”
“Very much afraid of it.”
“You wouldn’t cry if you found she had gone—would you?”
“Well, perhaps we should not cry, for we think we ought to be manly, and not be babies; but, of course, we should feel very bad about it.”