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“Huh!” grunted the Shark skeptically.

Poke laughed aloud. “Ho, ho, ho! I don’t beat you often, Shark, but when I do, I beat you all to pieces. Talk about mince pie, if you want to. I’ll talk about it, too, and when we get through, we’ll see who hits nearer the truth. Just you wait and see, and——”

But the Shark was moving away. For once, at least, he found it impossible to maintain argument against Poke, the unmathematical philosopher and seer of strange visions.

Sam’s good deed had brought him most embarrassing reward. Of this the Shark was quite as convinced as Poke could be, or Sam himself.

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Sam took the matter of Mrs. Grant’s gratitude and the promised pie much to heart. He was, as it happened, a sensitive fellow, and he was of the age at which dread of ridicule is perhaps keenest. So he readily imagined that the whole school was laughing at him and the picture he must have presented with Mrs. Grant’s stout arm about his shoulders; and made himself miserable by suspicion of amusement in every glance he caught and of personal application in every laugh he heard.