“I—I won’t admit you—you licked me, but—but you got me down,” he said brokenly. “And—and I gave up. But that—that doesn’t settle anything.”
To his surprise Sam laughed.
“Sure settles one thing, Orkney! You said you—you wanted to fight me, but couldn’t—’member? Well, somehow, we seem to have dodged the difficulty.”
Tom seemed to find a certain grim consolation in this aspect of the case.
“That’s so. But—but what do you want me to do now?”
“Stand up!” said Sam promptly. “We’ll brush the snow off each other. Then we’ll go back to the camp. You’d better slip in the way you slipped out. I’ll go in at the front door, and tell the fellows you’re working here, and I’ve had a talk with you. Then you’ll happen along naturally. The crowd will be decent.”
Orkney made a grimace. “S’pose I’ll have to see ’em—might as well have it over. But see here, Parker! Mind you, I haven’t promised to go back to Plainville.”
“But you’ll think it over?”
“Well,” said Orkney reluctantly, “I’ll agree to that. Yes; I’ll stay a day or two, anyway, and think it over.”