"No, sir."
"Well, will you?"
"Well, you know how much it is, don't you?"
"Yes, sir, I do. It is twenty-four dollars and sixty-five cents. You said you spent twenty dollars. But here is a discrepancy of four dollars and sixty-five cents. How do you account for it?"
"Well, I suppose I didn't figure just exactly right," said Clyde, irritated by the accuracy of figures such as these.
But now Mason slyly and softly inquiring: "Oh, yes, Griffiths, I forgot, how much was the boat you hired at Big Bittern?" He was eager to hear what Clyde would have to say as to this, seeing that he had worked hard and long on this pitfall.
"Oh—ah—ah—that is," began Clyde, hesitatingly, for at Big Bittern, as he now recalled, he had not even troubled to inquire the cost of the boat, feeling as he did at the time that neither he nor Roberta were coming back. But now here and in this way it was coming up for the first time. And Mason, realizing that he had caught him here, quickly interpolated a "Yes?" to which Clyde replied, but merely guessing at that: "Why, thirty-five cents an hour—just the same as at Grass Lake—so the boatman said."
But he had spoken too quickly. And he did not know that in reserve was the boatman who was still to testify that he had not stopped to ask the price of the boat. And Mason continued:
"Oh, it was, was it? The boatman told you that, did he?"
"Yes, sir."