tobacco was of the best the store afforded; yet there was
no peace between the two. They bickered like schoolboys kept indoors.

"How many link-skins in the bale you made up today?" asked Peter Minot.

"Three-seventy-two," his young partner answered in a surly tone that
was in itself a provocation.

"I made it three-seventy-three," said Peter curtly.

"What's the difference?" demanded Ambrose Doane.

"Seven dollars," said Peter dryly.

"Well, you can claim the extra one, can't you," snarled Ambrose, "and
make an allowance if it's found short?"

"That's not the way I like to do business!"

"Too bad about you!"

The older man frowned darkly, clamped his teeth upon his pipe, and held
his tongue.

His silence was an additional aggravation to the other. "What do you
want me to do," he burst out with an amount of passion absurdly
disproportionate to the matter at issue, "cut it open and count it over
and bale it up again?"

"To blazes with it!" said Peter. "I want you to keep your temper!"

"I'm sick of this!" cried Ambrose with the wilful abandon of one
hopelessly in the wrong. "You're at me from morning till night!
Nothing I do is right. Why can't you leave me alone?"

Peter took his pipe out of his mouth and looked at his young partner in
astonishment. His face turned a dull brick color and his blue eyes
snapped.

He spoke in a voice of portentous softness: "Who the hell do you think
you are? A little gorramighty? To make a mistake is natural; to fly
into a temper when it is discovered is childish. What's the matter
with you these past ten days, anyway? A man can't look at you but you
begin to bark and froth. You'd best go off by yourself a while and eat
grass to cool your blood!"

Having delivered himself, Peter pulled deeply at his pipe and gazed
across the lake with a scowl of honest resentment.

It was a long speech to come from Peter, and it went unexpectedly to
the point. Ambrose was silenced. For a long time neither spoke.

Little by little the angry red faded out of Peter's cheeks and neck,
and his forehead smoothed itself. Stealing a glance at young Ambrose,
the blue eyes began to twinkle.

"Say!" he said suddenly.

Ambrose twisted petulantly and muttered in his throat.

"Stick out your tongue!" commanded Peter.

Ambrose stared at him in angry stupefaction. "What the deuce--"

"No," said Peter, "you're not sick. Your eyeballs is as clean as new
milk; your skin is as pink