to think anything about you that you don't want me to think, but I must
say I don't know within a thousand miles what you're driving at. Out
with it, and even if you're the train bandit who held up the Cannonball
or if you've plotted to kidnap the Board of Education, I'll never tell."

Marty's quizzical humor was not making J.W.'s enterprise any easier. He
had always supposed that what the leaflets called "personal evangelism"
had to be done in a spirit of solemnity. But how was he to acquire the
proper frame of mind? And certainly there was nothing solemn about Marty
just now. Yet the thing had gone too far; it was too late to retreat. He
tried to think how Mr. Drury would do it, but saw only that if it was
Mr. Dairy's business he would go straight to the center of it.
Desperately, therefore, he plunged in.

"Well, Marty," he said, speaking now with nervous haste, "what I'm up
against is this. What's the matter with your being a Christian?"

He will never forget the swift look of blank amazement that Marty turned
on him, nor the slow-mounting flush that followed the first astonished
start. For Marty did not answer, and turned his face away. J.W. was sure
that in his blundering bluntness he had offended and probably angered
his closest friend. The distress of that thought served at least to
drive away all the self-consciousness which thus far had plagued him.

"Say, Marty," he pleaded, putting his hand on the other's arm, "forget
it, if I've hurt your feelings. I know as well as you do that I'm not
fit to talk about such things to anybody, and, honest, I meant nothing
but to say what I knew I'd got to say."

Then Marty turned himself back slowly, and J.W. saw the troubled look