"I don't care thirty cents what anybody says," Tom said; "I got to be fair."
"I'm not mad, you old grouch," Roy said, "and you should say sixty cents, because the price of everything is double. We should worry. I was waiting here to meet you so as to tell you that I don't know why you did that and I don't care. People have done crazier things than that, I should hope. We can bunk in tents, all right. So don't be sore, Tomasso. I'm sorry I said what I did and I know perfectly well that you just didn't think. You don't suppose I really meant that I thought you knew anybody in that troop out in Ohio, do you? I just said it because I was mad. Gee whiz, I know you wouldn't give anybody the choice before us—before your own fellows. I was mad because I was disappointed. But now I know how maybe you were all kind of—you know—rattled on account of being so busy.
"I ain't mad," said Tom, in his dull, stolid way; "I got to go across the street and mail this letter."
"And you'll come to meeting next Friday night?" Roy asked, anxiously.
"I don't know," Tom said.
"And I'm going to tell the fellows that you assigned five, six, and seven, to that Ohio troop just because you were thinking about something else when you did it, and that you didn't know anything more about those fellows than if they were the man in the moon," Roy paused a moment. "Did you?" he said conclusively.
"You can tell them whatever you want to," Tom said. "You can tell them that I didn't know anything about them if you want to. I don't care what you tell them."
Roy paused, hardly knowing what to say. In talking with Tom one had to get him right just as a wrestler must get his victim right and Roy knew that he must watch his step, so to speak.
"You can tell them they won't lose anything," Tom said.
"They'll lose something all right if they lose you, Tomasso," Roy said, with a note of deep feeling in his voice. "But we're not going to lose you, I can tell you that. They think you have no use for the scouts any more, because you met so many people in France, and know a lot of grown-up people."