linters!" says he as he heaves a chair into the showcase
among the fake jew'lry, and with another proceeds to make vicious swipes
at whatever's left on the shelves.

As a tearoom wrecker he was some artist, believe me! Not a blessed thing
that could be smashed did he miss, and what he couldn't break he bent or
dented.

"Ain't he just grand!" observes Celia to her dumpy friend. "My! I didn't
think it was in him."

It was, though. A village fire department couldn't have done a neater
job, or been more thorough. He even tosses down a lot of work baskets
and jumps on 'em and kicks 'em about.

"There!" says he, after a lively session, when the place looks like it
had been through a German siege. "Now it's all genuine junk, I guess."

Sister Evelyn gazes at him placid. "No doubt about that," she remarks.
"And I hope you feel better, Brother dear. Perhaps you will tell me,
though, what is to become of me now."

"I am going to leave some money for you," says he. "If you're silly
enough, you can buy a lot more of this stuff and keep on. If you have
any sense, you'll quit and go live with Irene."

"And you, Gerald?" asks Evelyn.

"I'm off," says he. "I'm going to do some real work, man's work. You saw
that dark-looking chap who was in here a few days ago? That was Bentley,
who used to be bank messenger in old Gordon's office. He was discharged
without cause too. But he had no five sisters to make a sappy tearoom
manager out of him. He went to the Argentine. Owns a big cattle ranch
down there. Wants me to go in with him and buy the adjoining ranch. He
sails day after to-morrow. I'm going with him, to live a wild, rough
life; and the wilder and rougher it is the better I shall like it."

"Oh!" says Sister Evelyn, liftin' her eyebrows sarcastic. "Will you?"

Well, that's just what J. Bayard and I have been askin' each other ever
since. Anyway, he's gone. Showed up here in the studio the last thing,
wearin' a wide-brimmed felt hat with a leather band--and if that don't
signify somethin' wild and rough, I don't know what does.

"Rather an impetuous nature, Gerald's," observes Steele. "I hope it
doesn't get him into trouble down there."

"Who knows?" says I. "Next thing we may be hearin' how he's tried to
stab some Spaniard with a whisk broom."

CHAPTER XV

SHORTY HEARS FROM PEMAQUID

It was mostly my fault. I'd left the Physical Culture Studio and was
swingin' east across 42d-st. absentminded, when I takes a