Читать книгу The Radio Boys with the Iceberg Patrol; Or, Making safe the ocean lanes онлайн

30 страница из 41

The boys hurried down and went into the living room, where they saw Captain Springer in animated conversation with Mr. and Mrs. Layton.

The captain rose to his feet and greeted each of the boys with a warm grasp of the hand.

“I’m in luck to find you all together,” he said genially, as he resumed his seat. “Though I’m going to call personally at each of your homes,” he added. “I’ve just been telling Mr. and Mrs. Layton something of what happened this afternoon. Of course I know you’ve already told them about it, but I know how modest you are, and I wanted them to know not only the truth but the whole truth.”

The boys blushed, and the captain laughed. “You’d have blushed still more if you had heard all I said,” he observed. “But at that I didn’t say enough. Your parents ought to be proud of you.”

“Here are two parents that are,” observed Mrs. Layton, and her husband smiled assent.

“I was talking with an old friend of mine some weeks ago,” remarked the captain, “and we were discussing whether American boys were what they used to be in the older and rougher days, when even the younger members of the family had to be trained to hold off an attack by Indians. He held that there was still as much good stuff in them as there ever was, and to prove it he told me about a group of boys that were with him in Spruce Mountain not long ago. And if what he told me was true—and I never knew him to say anything that wasn’t—he proved his point.”