“Of course I do! Dud has shown you two chaps that, whether he’s a brilliant conversationalist or isn’t, he’s a perfectly human sort of a chump, and you both like him a little better than you did yesterday, and tomorrow Dud can go around and mention to a few fellows that last evening he picnicked with Ordway and Blake on the river, and the fellows will think, ‘Now if Baker is in with Ordway and Nick Blake he must be all right,’ and——”
“Don’t be a rotter, Jimmy!” begged Dud.
“Rotter nothing! It’s so, isn’t it? Mind, I don’t say you will tell about it, but you could. You won’t, as a matter of fact, because you don’t play the game for all it’s worth.”
“Honest, Jimmy, you’re enough to sicken a fellow,” said Nick. “If I thought you believed what you preached, or practiced it——”
“I do,” insisted Jimmy stoutly.
“You don’t,” contradicted Dud. “Come on home before you talk any more nonsense.”
“I deny the nonsense,” replied Jimmy good-naturedly, “but I’m perfectly willing to go home. I’ve been trying to for half an hour. Help me up, someone. My legs are stiff with the cold. I say, we mustn’t forget to let the canoes get adrift, fellows.”
“Oh, rot,” said Hugh. “If we’ve got to lie, let’s lie decently.”
“Why lie at all, then?” asked Dud. “Let’s just say that we wanted to have supper on the river, and—and had it!”