"You'll have to do some tall asking, I'm afraid.—I don't like you much when you preach, James. I came here for sympathy, not sermons."
"You won't get me to sympathize with your making a beast of yourself."
"James, you know perfectly well you were tight as a tick at the football banquet in Boston last fall."
"I'm no paragon, I admit."
"You say that as if you thought you were, and expected me to say so. No, you're right—you're not. There!"
James' humor suddenly changed. His grave face relaxed into a smile, he rose from his chair and wandered to the end of the room and back to the window-seat.
"All right, we'll leave it at that; I'm not." He stood for a moment hands in pockets, smiling down at his brother. "It's nice to find one point we can agree on, anyway.... I won't bother you. After all, I suppose there's not much danger."
"No ... I don't think I should ever really get to like the stuff." But Harry did not smile and fall in with his brother's mood; he had too much on his mind still. "I haven't told you the most disagreeable part of it," he went on. "Something happened to-day that made me sorry I had made a fool of myself. Shep McGee came to me to-day and said that he'd heard about our little coup de théâtre, and that he was sorry, but being one of Junius' particular friends he couldn't be friendly with me any more unless I apologized. I was sorry, because I've always liked Shep and got on very well with him."
"What did you say?"
"Oh, of course I was pretty peeved, and I messed it up still further. I told him I was glad he'd spoken, because henceforth my acquaintance would not be recruited conspicuously from Junius' special friends. I said that, strange as it might seem, I felt myself able to hand him, Shep, over to Junius' complete possession without a tear. I added that I thought he would find it safer in the future to choose his friends exclusively from the cause of Christ, and suggested that he might try to convert Junius to the same august organization...."