country. That is what I want
it to be. For, you see, it's like this: We haven't had a champion who
came from our own real old Puritan stock in years and years like
Conway has, and it'll stir up a whole lot of enthusiasm--a whole lot!
I want to play that part of it up big. Now, you're the only ones who
can give me that--you're the only men who knew him when he was a
boy--and right there let's make that a starter! What sort of a
youngster was he? Quite a handful, I should imagine--now wasn't he?"

The man on the desk crossed one fat knee over the other, tapping a
flat-heeled shoe with his pencil. He tilted the brown felt hat a
little farther back from his forehead and winked one eye at the Judge
in jovial understanding. And Judge Maynard also crossed his knees,
tucked his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets, and winked back with
equal joviality.

"Well, ye-e-s," he agreed, and the agreement was weightily deliberate.
"Ye-e-s, quite a handful was Jeddy."

One pudgy hand was uplifted in sudden, deprecatory haste, as though he
would not be misunderstood.

"Nothing really wrong, of course," he hurried to add with oratorical
emphasis. "Nothing like that! There never was anything mean or sneaking
about Jeddy, s'far as I can recollect. Just mischievous--mischievous
and up and coming all the time. But there were folks," Judge Maynard's
voice became heavy with righteous accusation--"it's always that way,
you understand--and there were folks, even right here in Jeddy's own
village, who used to call him a bad egg. But I--I knew better!
Nothing but mischievousness and high spirits--that's what I always
thought. And I said it, too--many's the time I said----"

The big shouldered boy near the door shifted his position a little.
He leaned forward until he could see Judge Maynard's round, red face a
little more distinctly. There was an odd expression upon Denny
Bolton's features when the fat man in brown lifted his eyes from his
notebook, eyes that twinkled with sympathetic comprehension.

"----That it was better a bad egg than an omelette, eh?" he
interrupted knowingly.

The Judge pounded his knee and rocked with mirth.

"Well, that's just about it--that's just about as near as words could
come to it," he managed to gasp, and the circle behind him rocked,
too, and pounded its knee as one man.

The man on the desk went on working industriously with his pencil,
even while he was speaking.

"And then I suppose he was pretty good