ing up--his
gait an apparently effortless, tireless, and comfortable amble,
congruent with bowed shoulders, bended head, introspective eyes, and
his aspect in general of patient preoccupation.

From time to time George, who was maintaining an unnatural and painful
silence, his mental processes stagnant with wonder and dull
resentment, eyed his companion askance, with furtive suspicion. Their
association was now one of some seven years' standing; and it seemed a
grievous thing that, after posing so long as the patient butt of his
rude humour, P.S. should have so suddenly turned and proved himself
the better man--and that not mentally alone.

"Lis'n--" George interjected of a sudden.

P. Sybarite started. "Eh?" he enquired blankly.

"I wanna know where you picked up all that classy footwork."

"Oh," returned P.S., depreciatory, "I used to spar a bit with the
fellows when I was a--ah--when I was younger."

"When you was at _what_?" insisted Bross, declining to be fobbed off
with any such flimsy evasion.

"When I was at liberty to."

"Huh! You mean, when you was at college."

"Please yourself," said P. Sybarite wearily.

"Well, you was at college oncet, wasn't you?"

"I was," P.S. admitted with reluctance; "but I never graduated. When I
was twenty-one I had to quit to go to work for Whigham & Wimper."

"G'wan," commented the other. "They ain't been in business twenty-five
years."

"I'm only thirty-one."

"More news for Sweeny. You'll never see forty again."

"That statement," said P. Sybarite with some asperity, "is an uncivil
untruth dictated by a spirit of gratuitous contentiousness--"

"Good God!" cried Bross in alarm. "I'm wrong and you're right and I
won't do it again--and forgive me for livin'!"

"With pleasure," agreed P. Sybarite pleasantly....

"It's a funny world," George resumed in philosophic humour, after a
time. "You wouldn't think I could work in the same dump with you seven
years and only be startin' to find out things about you--like to-day.
I always thought your name was Pete--honest."

"Continue to think so," P. Sybarite advised briefly.

"Your people had money, didn't they, oncet?"

"I've been told so, but if true, it only goes to prove there's nothing
in the theory of heredity...."

"I gotcha," announced Bross, upon prolonged and painful analysis.

"How?" asked P. Sybarite, who had fallen to thinking of other matters.

"I mean, I just dropped to your high-sign to mind my ow