Greenfield looked at him hard and nodded.
"Keerect, Bub; quite so!"
"Why didn't you?"
"Why!" cried Greenfield angrily. "Ain't you ever had any imagination? Did I want to shoot you down like a common ordinary pickpocket after taking you three times around the world? That was no ending! God, what a chase it was!"
"It was long, Bucky," Frawley admitted. "It was a good one!"
"Can't you understand anything?" Greenfield cried querulously. "Where's anything bigger, more than what we've done? And to have it end like this—to have a bug—a miserable, squashy bug beat you after all!"
For a long moment there was no sound, while Greenfield lay, twisting, his head averted, buried in the leaves.
"It's not right, Bucky," said Frawley at last, with an effort at sympathy. "It oughtn't to have ended this way."
"It was worth it!" Greenfield cried. "Three years! There ain't much dirt we haven't kicked up! Asia, Africa—a regular Cook's tour through Europe, North and South Ameriky. And what seas, Bub!" His voice faltered. The drops of sweat stood thickly on his forehead; but he pulled himself together gamely. "Do you remember the Sea of Japan with its funny little toy junks? Man, we've beaten out Columbus, Jools Verne, and the rest of them—hollow, Bub!"
"I say, what did you do it for?"