“Look here, Poke,” he said. “I know how you feel; how you hate to take all of what you think ought to be divided among the gang. But it’s the thing for you to do. That dinner of yours was really a club affair. You gave it to even up a club account with Varley. So the whole club is concerned in getting you out of a scrape that resulted from the dinner. Every one of us feels that way about it—Orkney most of all. So trot along, and pay the bill, and be happy.”
Poke drew a long face. “Happy? With just a shift of load? I’ll be out of debt to the hotel man, and under debt to every one of you fellows.”
Sam laughed, and it wasn’t a feigned laugh, either. “Poke, you miss the combination! There isn’t one of us who hasn’t had his full share of help, one way or another, out of all we went through.”
“Umph! What did you get, for instance?” Poke demanded.
“I got a lot.”
“A mince pie! You’re fooling me—or trying to.”
“Yes, I got a mince pie,” said Sam calmly. “And I’ll tell you this: I wouldn’t miss the pointers I’ve picked up in getting it. I know more about people, and er—er—about motives. And I can see what a fool I made of myself for a while. And I see, too, how what seem like little things at the start can lead to big things. Why, it’s like rolling a snowball that gets bigger and bigger as you push it along. It began with Varley breaking our rules, and walking into the club. Then came the runaway, with Varley mixed up in it, and Mrs. Grant’s coming after us, and my row with the club, and, finally, after Varley had treated us and you’d treated him in return and got in trouble doing it—why, it all had to happen to lead us to Sugar Valley. And you wouldn’t have missed your experience there, would you?”
“Course I wouldn’t!” cried Poke indignantly.
“Well, then! What more would you have? Tom Orkney’s as pleased as Punch to have found that old book, but it pleases him more to be able to give you a lift. No, Poke, there’s nothing for you to do but make a fair wind of it, and sail down to the Rainbow Mountain House, and settle up.”
“You honestly mean that?”