“You bet! Poor little cuss!” muttered Dan.
Spencer’s fate continued the subject for discussion all the rest of the day, but, as Dan had said, their duty in the affair seemed to have ended and it was decided that the next day, as soon as they could do so, they would continue on to Newport for their mail and then to New York.
They went for a long walk before supper-time, visiting the lighthouse and a life-saving station, and returning at six o’clock very hungry, so hungry, in fact, that the possibilities of the _Vagabond’s_ larder seemed quite inadequate to the demands of the occasion. So they returned to the hotel in the village and fared very well indeed. After supper they adjourned to the writing room and levied on the hotel stationery. Everyone found plenty to write home about and for half an hour the pens scratched diligently. It was Tom whose ideas were exhausted first. After addressing and sealing his letter and thumping a stamp on to the corner of the envelope he picked up a newspaper and tilted himself back in his chair under the light. Two minutes later the front legs of the chair hit the floor with a crash.
The others frowned but failed to look up from their letters.
“I say, you chaps!” called Tom more loudly. “The _Sue_ won!”
“For gracious sake, Tommy,” protested Bob, “shut up! How do you think we’re going to write letters when——”
“Oh, go ahead and write your old letters,” grumbled Tom. “I thought you’d want to know how it came out, that’s all.”
“What’s he talking about, Bob?” Dan asked.
“I’m telling you that the _Sue_ won,” answered Tom with dignity.
“Who’s being sued, Tommy?” asked Nelson, looking up from his sixth sheet of paper. Tom looked about him despairingly.
“Say, you lunatics,” he exclaimed after an eloquent silence, “stop gibbering a moment, will you? I’m trying to tell you that the _Sue_——”
“Oh, Sioux!” said Nelson, turning back to the letter. “I thought you were talking about some one suing some one. Anyone scalped yet? I’d like to live out your way and see some of these Indian uprisings, Tommy. Are there any Sioux in Chicago?”
“There are plenty of Indians there,” laughed Dan, “but maybe they’re not Sioux.”
Tom passed the insult disdainfully and retired behind his paper with insulted dignity.