The tall youth and his plump chum were quite as much in earnest as were Herman and the Trojan, but temperamentally were not so well fitted to carry out a commander’s orders implicitly. Besides, under the depressing weather conditions, Poke could hardly avoid meditation upon the sorrows of his own lot. With rain driving in his face and snow water at times a quarter-way up the legs of his rubber boots, it is scarcely to be wondered that he tended to the pessimistic view. To tell the truth, Poke liked the comfortable things of life, and turned regretfully from the warm kitchens of the farmhouses at which he halted to ask the question, to which there was regularly the same answer. Nobody had seen a smallish boy in glasses and a larger boy who didn’t wear glasses.
Trudging on, doggedly and faithfully, Poke relapsed into a dull silence, which at last attracted the attention of Step. The latter was not unmindful of his friend’s mood; in fact, he tried to show his sympathy. Ordinarily, the two got on famously, but now Step contrived to strike a jarring note.
“Oh, buck up, Poke; buck up!” he urged. “Luck’ll have to turn. You ought to be able to see that.”
Now, this was meant in all kindness, but it did not fall pleasingly on Poke’s ear. Doubtless the fault was his own, not Step’s.
“Huh! Talk’s cheap!” he growled.
Step flushed wrathfully. “Oh, well, if you don’t want to see, you don’t have to, you chump!”
“Huh! Chump, am I? Well, if I had a periscope-pole neck like yours I could see a lot of funny things, too.”
This was personal insult, so intended and so received. Step pulled up short.
“Periscope neck, eh? Well, I’d rather have one like that than be a human flat-iron!”
Poke halted, too. He glared up at Step as savagely as Step was glaring down at him. Together they presented a quaint scene of wrath, standing there in slush to their ankles and with the rain running down their long coats in little streams. The humor of the situation escaped Poke, but he was quick witted enough to take advantage of the circumstance that Step had been first to pause. He cut short his own delay, and took as long a stride as his short legs permitted.