nnington found a passably good market for Warrington's vegetables.
Friendship, like constancy, finds strange niches. The Bennington
family were not very cordial to the young vegetable grower. On the
mother's side there was a long line of military ancestors. It is
impossible that a cabbage and a uniform should cohere. Warrington's
great-grandsires had won honors in the Revolution, but as this fact
did not make cabbages grow any faster he kept the faded glory to
himself.

In college the two lads were as inseparable as La Mole and Coconnas;
they played on the same teams, rowed on the same crews and danced with
the same girls. The only material difference in their respective
talents lay in one thing: Bennington could not write a respectable
rhyme, and I'm not sure that he wasn't proud of it. It distinguished
him from the other members of his class. As for Warrington, there
wasn't a pretty girl in the whole college town who couldn't boast of
one or more of his impassioned stanzas. And you may be sure that when
Warrington became talked about these self-same halting verses were dug
up from the garret and hung in sundry parlors.

Bennington was handsome, and, but for his father's blood, the idleness
of his forebears would have marked him with effeminateness. His head,
his face, the shape of his hands and feet, these proclaimed the
aristocrat. It was only in the eyes and the broad shoulders that you
recognized the iron-monger's breed. His eyes were as blue as his own
hammered steel; but, like the eyes of the eagle at peace, they were
mild and dreamy and deceptive to casual inspection. In the shops the
men knew all about those eyes and shoulders. They had been fooled
once, but only once. They had felt the iron in the velvet.

"I'm mighty glad to see you, boy," said Warrington, dropping his arms.
"You haven't changed a bit."

"Nor you, Dick; if anything you look younger."

"How many years is it, John?"

"Six or seven; not very long."

"Time never seems long to a man who never has to wait for anything. I
have had to reckon time with hours full of suspense, and those hours
have aged me; perhaps not outwardly, but all the same, I'm an old man,
John."

"Nonsense!"

"When did you cross?"

"About a year ago, when father died. I had given up the English end of
the concern two years before, and was just wandering about the
continent. I was dreadfully disappointed when I learned that you had
visited the shops in ninety-eight.