“Oh! Well, how much, then?”
“Seventeen dollars and a half, Sam.”
There was a laugh. “Do you mean they only gave you seventeen dollars and a half for saving their lives?” ejaculated Ben. “Why, the paper said there were two hundred of ’em!”
“That’s all they gave me, though,” responded Kid. “I showed it to Bert. He saw it. You ask him.”
“That’s right, fellows; I counted it,” confirmed Bert.
“Look here,” said Ben, “let’s get the hang of this, fellows. Kid, you sit down there and tell the whole thing just as it happened. And no—no fancy embroidery, do you understand? What made you start selling those Tinkham things, in the first place?”
So Kid, seated on the edge of a chair and looking as truthful as one of Raphael’s cherubs, began at the very beginning and told everything; how he had agreed to give ten dollars to the Junior Four Fund and had sent for the Tinkham’s Throat-Ease tablets to make the money; how, yielding to sudden temptation, he had fabricated the fiction regarding his family’s financial losses and how Dr. Merton had threatened to write to his folks and tell them how plucky he was; how with disgrace staring him in the face he had resolved to have one grand final spree in the village before the sword fell; and how having determined to run away to sea rather than face the results of his course, he had found the slide on the railroad track and become a hero and been brought back willy-nilly to Mt. Pleasant.
When he had at last finished his narrative it was Stanley Pierce who voiced the general verdict.
“Well, Kid,” said Stanley in a voice of reluctant admiration, “you’re certainly a wonder!”
“I—I’m sorry,” said Kid earnestly. “And I’ll give back the money, honest!”