Clint's sun-browned face was all aglow. "I'm glad you've told," said he. "I knew you would some time. But I never would myself, though I knew, because I was going across lots by your father's back yard the day you and old Davy were talking about the fish."
"Oh, Clint!"
"Why didn't you tell?"
"You wouldn't have believed, me if I had," said Clint, with a sunny smile. "So I waited for Mel to get ready to tell. I knew he would some time."
"I feel like a dreadful wretch," said Mel, trying to laugh, but making a miserable failure of it, "and I'm—"
"I'll tell you what," put in Eb Gerry, "let's shake hands all around and call it square, and never say another word about it."
"Agreed."
So that was the way it ended. The boys shook hands until their arms were lame, and laughed and cheered uproariously; and Clint got leave of absence for the rest of the day, and they all went back to the island again—all but Mel, who had, he said, to go home with the twins.
But the boys thought there was something more in the wind, and they were sure of it when Mel met them as they were going home with a score of boys harnessed into his father's carriage, which was fairly covered with green waving boughs. And into the carriage, in spite of all his remonstrance, the merry crowd lifted Clint Parsons. And they trotted away with him in triumph to the village, where everybody laughed and cheered them, though a good many people didn't quite know what it was all about.
So they brought Clint back from Coventry with a coach and a good many more than four; and I do not know that there are two better friends in Barham this minute than Clint Parsons and Mel Berry.