Phil threw up both hands as if in surrender.
“You never will let me do anything like this by myself, fellows,” he told them; “even when I’ve got money to burn. But I want to say right here that I think ten times as much of you, Lub, X-Ray and Ethan, as if you did. It means something to all of you to make this sacrifice, while to me it isn’t a bit of difference. So I say and I repeat it, that you deserve a whole lot more credit than I ever can. And what’s more, I’m as proud as anything to shake hands with such chums.”
He gravely went around pumping a hand of each fellow, and there was a deal of sincerity in the act, even though they all laughed—perhaps to hide the fact that there might be a suspicious moisture in their rapidly winking eyes.
“Isn’t it queer how we seem to rub up against something of this kind everywhere we go on our trips?” remarked X-Ray.
“Why, so it is,” Ethan added; “in the first place, when we were in the Adirondacks there was that old hermit and his little girl, Mazie; we had a hand in bringing them a measure of joy, and reuniting Meredith with his estranged wife. They’ve been writing ever since how grateful they were on account of the little we managed to do for them.”
“Yes,” Lub hurriedly continued, “and even around our home town of Brewster, when we were gathering nuts for the children in the orphan asylum remember how we had a chance to help that country boy, Casper Bunce, who had run away from the farmer he had been bound to. The courts fixed all that, and he’s got a happy home now on the farm of Miss Bowers.”
“Even down on the Shore, when we were duck shooting on Currituck Sound,” X-Ray went on to say, not wishing to be left out entirely, “we managed to bridge over the troubles between the young bayman Malachi Jordon, his little wife, and her savage old dad who was separating the couple. When we left they were all bunched and waving us good-by.”
“It does seem to be the bounden duty of the Mountain Boys to carry some sunshine along with them wherever they go,” laughed Phil; “and to tell you the truth I’m not so very much surprised.”
“You mean it’s getting to be a regular thing with us; is that it, Phil?” questioned Lub.
“That’s what you might call it, when you keep on repeating a certain thing,” Phil declared. “There’s an old chestnut of a story you may remember that illustrates the point I’m making. It seems that a lawyer was trying to get a witness to admit a certain point that would favor his side of the case, and the old fellow kept on doggedly avoiding committing himself. So the lawyer asked him what he would call it if he leaned from the window and fell out. ‘I’d call that an accident,’ replied the witness. ‘Then suppose you deliberately walked up-stairs and repeated the identical performance, what would you call that?’ demanded the lawyer. ‘Oh! I should say that was a coincidence,’ the witness told him. ‘Well, now what if you even went up again, and for the third time looked out of that same window, only to fall again; what would you call it?’ And the witness without the least hesitation bawled out: ‘Why, sir, I’d say it was a habit!’ And that’s what it’s getting to be with us Mountain Boys.”