“Wasn’t it all right?” Simpson asked.
“Sure it was.”
“Well, what are you smiling about then? Gee, I can’t understand you at all. I like you,” he added with characteristic frankness, “but I can’t understand you. Somehow you make me feel, I don’t know, sort of not sure of myself. Good turns are part of the game, aren’t they?”
“I’ll say so,” drawled Gaylong. “Did you hold the door open for a resident trustee yet? Don’t forget about that.”
“Yes I did,” said Simpson rather testily, “and what of it?”
“And you’re paddling me around the lake; there’s real sacrifice for you.”
“That’s your good turn, not mine,” said Simpson generously.
“It isn’t a good turn at all, that’s the point,” said Gaylong. “Politeness is all right, if you don’t overdo it, and kindness and going to the grocery store for your mother are all right. Only don’t jot them down. If you’re going to be a scout at all, be a big one. Be one like Slade. Know what I mean? Look at that moon,” he drawled, squinting at it in his funny way; “it’s going to be hot to-morrow. That means ice cream. Did you turn the freezer for Chocolate Drop yet? That’s one of the regulation good turns up here.”
“I know what you mean,” Billy Simpson said in his customary, generous, eager way. “But gee, it’s pretty hard to tell when you’re serious. I don’t know how to take you, honest I don’t. What would you call a good turn?”
“Look at that moonlight on the water; pretty huh?”