“Why do you keep saying ‘but’?” asked Al.
“Oh!” Griff had hard work not to break down again. In spite of the way they had found him, in spite of what he had been planning to do, there was something that touched the youthful hearts of the trio, in Griff’s sorrowful eyes and drawn face.
“Oh!” he repeated, “if only somebody could help me instead of hounding me and——”
“We’re not ‘hounding’ you,” Bob defended their action. “You’d have done the same.”
“But you’ve been watching me and following me and suspecting me,” Griff declared sadly. “I know I deserve it—but——”
“Oh! Stop saying but!” Curt was annoyed by what he took to be an attempt to win sympathy. “We’d have helped you, instead of ‘hounding’ you if you’d been honest, instead of trying to be cunning and in with the wrong sort of people.”
“Oh, yes, you would!” retorted Griff, bitterly. “That’s easy to say.”
“Well, it’s true,” declared Bob stoutly.
“Nobody helps me,” responded Griff. “Everybody is after me for one reason or another.”
“That’s because you’re so furtive and fidgety that you ask for it—and doing things—like this—” Bob shook the bills.