“Quit! No fair!” protested Mr. Higman in a voice of poignant agony.
“You’re right. It is n’t fair. Shake, old boy.” Young Mr. Robson gravely shook young Burton Higman by the hand. “Between you and me, only honorable and knightly rivalry. We’ll go fishing some day and talk over high ordeals and other matters close to the heart.”
“And at present Buddy and I will map out the attack upon the asparagus,” said the girl.
She turned away, with a smile of dismissal for her informal caller.
As he took himself off, Marcia Ames turned to her other admirer. “Well, Buddy. What do you think of him?”
“He’s a nut,” was the prompt and uncompromising decision.
“So bad? If it is bad. What is a nut?”
“Plumb crazy.”
“You think so? Perhaps, a little.”
“Plumb!” persisted the other jealously. But the innate and responsive fair-mindedness of youth prompted him to add: “But, say! When he kinda smiles that way at ye, it’s all off. There’s nothin’ to it. It gets you. Ain’t it true?” inquired Buddy earnestly.