Читать книгу Frank Merriwell, Jr., in Arizona; or, Clearing a Rival's Record онлайн

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“Some fellows certainly have a habit of dropping into a good thing,” murmured Shoup.

“It wasn’t a habit with Blunt. He had about as hard a time getting along as any fellow you ever saw.”

“So he and Merriwell were enemies, and now they’re friends?”

“Yes.”

“Look out, Jode!” joked Shoup. “Maybe Merriwell will win you over before you have a chance to settle accounts with him.”

“No danger,” grunted Lenning. “Merriwell hasn’t any more use for me than I have for him. Merriwell wouldn’t wipe his feet on me, I reckon, and you can bet your last sou I wouldn’t give him a chance to try. He knows the sort of father I had, and that I’m headed wrong as a birthright, and will go wrong in spite of fate.”

“What a fellow inherits he can’t get away from,” declared Shoup. “Merriwell, it seems, understands that. When you know a thing’s true, what’s the use of trying to buck against it? We’re all born with a handicap of some sort in the race of life; we’ve got to win by doing the thing that comes easiest.”

This was the logic of a drugged conscience, of a fellow who was not himself at the very moment he brought up the argument. For a lad like Jode Lenning, already started on the downhill road, such a fellow was a dangerous companion.