“I’ll try, if our names get on the list.”
“And you think they are sure to elect you? Of course you’ve done nothing to disgrace Templeton, eh?”
The boy’s face fell, and Pledge followed up his hit.
“They’d like you all the better, wouldn’t they, if they heard you and your precious friends are—well, quite a matter of interest to the Templeton police; eh, my boy?”
“We’re not,” stammered Georgie, very red. “You needn’t say anything about that, Pledge.”
“Is it likely? Don’t I owe you too much already for cutting me, and talking of me behind my back, and letting the monitors make a catspaw of you to hurt me? Oh, no! I’ve no interest in telling anybody!”
“Really, Pledge, I never talked of you behind your back, and all that. I didn’t mean to cut you. Please don’t go telling everybody. It’s bad enough as it is.”
Pledge chuckled to himself, and began to get his tea-pot out of his cupboard.
“You see I have to help myself now,” said he.
Georgie’s heart was touched. What with dread of the possible mischief Pledge could do him, and with a certain amount of self-reproach at his desertion, he felt the least he could do would be to fall into his old ways for this one evening.