"
"You do yourself injustice."
"Now, now--don't preach. I've been expecting it."
"You needn't. I'm too busy with my own case to attend to yours."
"Lucky for me. I feel you'd be a zealous preacher if you ever got
started."
"What route do you expect to take?" pursued Richard, steering away from
dangerous ground.
Lorimer outlined it, in his most languid manner. One would have thought
he had little real interest in his plan, after all.
"It's great! You'll have the time of your life!"
"I might have had."
"You will have--you can't help it."
"Not without the man I want in the bunk next mine," said Belden Lorimer,
gazing through half-shut eyes at nothing in particular.
Richard experienced the severest pang of regret he had yet known.
"If that's true, old Lorry," said he slowly, "I'm sorrier than I can
tell you."
"Then--_come along_!" Lorimer looked waked up at last. He laid a
persuasive hand on Richard's arm.
There was a moment of tensity. Then:
"If I should do it," said Richard, regarding steadily a dog in the road
some hundred yards ahead, "would you feel any respect whatever for me?"
"Dead loads of it, I assure you.
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