Selden. They concentrated their
combined attention upon him, Belter and Johnson leaning forward on their
folded arms, to watch him as he talked.
"Billy Page came back in August, looking pretty bum," Nick Baumgarten
began. "He'd been painting gay Paree brick red, and he'd spent more
money than he'd meant to, and that wasn't half enough. Landed dead
broke. He said he'd had a great time, but he'd come home with rather a
dark brown taste in his mouth, that he'd like to get rid of."
"He thought you were a fool to go off cycling into the country," put in
Wetherbee, "but I told him I guessed that was where he was 'way off. I
believed you'd had the best time of the two of you."
"Boys," said Selden, "I had the time of my life." He said it almost
solemnly, and laid his hand on the table. "It was like one of those
yarns Bert tells us. Half the time I didn't believe it, and half the
time I was ashamed of myself to think it was all happening to me and
none of your fellows were in it."
"Oh, well," said Jem Belter, "luck chases some fellows, anyhow. Look at
Nick, there."
"Well," Selden summed the whole thing up, "I just FELL into it where
it was so deep that I had to strike out all I knew how to keep from
drowning.
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