“Why, your way of shutting your eyes, and going in blind.”
“Well, that's a queer wish for a fighting man,” said Tom, laughing. “We always thought a rusher no good at school, and that the thing to learn was, to go in with your own eyes open, and shut up other people's.”
“Ah but we hadn't cut our eye-teeth then. I look at these things from a professional point of view. My business is to get fellows to shut their eyes tight, and I begin to think you can't do it as it should be done, without shutting your own first.”
“I don't take.”
“Why, look at the way you talked your convict—I beg your pardon—your unfortunate friend—into enlisting tonight. You talked as if you believed every word you were saying to him.”
“So I did.”
“Well, I should like to have you for a recruiting sergeant, if you could only drop that radical bosh. If I had had to do it, instead of enlisting, he would have gone straight off and hung himself in the stable.”
“I'm glad you didn't try your hand at it then.”
“Look again at me. Do you think anyone but such a—well I don't want to say anything uncivil—a headlong dog like you could have got me into such a business as to-day's? Now I want to be able to get other fellows to make just such fools of themselves as I've made of myself to-day. How do you do it?”
“I don't know, unless it is that I can't help always looking at the best side of things myself, and so—”