gy gave me hell this morning for
not treating you as a man and a brother, and I came round to try to
put things right."

"It's very considerate of Peggy, I'm sure," said Marmaduke.

"Now look here, old Doggie----"

"I told you when we first met yesterday that I vehemently object to
being called Doggie."

"But why?" asked Oliver. "I've made inquiries, and find that all your
pals----"

"I haven't any pals, as you call them."

"Well, all our male contemporaries in the place who have the honour of
your acquaintance--they all call you Doggie, and you don't seem to
mind."

"I do mind," replied Marmaduke angrily, "but as I avoid their company
as much as possible, it doesn't very much matter."

Oliver stretched out his legs and put his hands behind his back--then
wriggled to his feet. "What a beast of a chair! Anyhow," he went on,
puffing at his pipe, "don't let us quarrel. I'll call you Marmaduke,
if you like, when I can remember--it's a beast of a name--like the
chair. I'm a rough sort of chap. I've had ten years' pretty rough
training. I've slept on boards. I've slept in the open without a cent
to hire a board. I've gone cold and I've gone hungry, and men have
knocked me about and I've knocked men about--and I've lost the
Durdlebury sense of social values. In the wilds if a man once gets the
name, say, of Duck-Eyed Joe, it sticks to him, and he accepts it and
answers to it, and signs 'Duck-Eyed Joe' on an IOU and honours the
signature."

"But I'm not in the wilds," said Marmaduke, "and haven't the slightest
intention of ever leading the unnatural and frightful life you
describe. So what you say doesn't apply to me."

"Quite so," replied Oliver. "That wasn't the moral of my discourse.
The habit of mind engendered in the wilds applies to me. Just as I
could never think of Duck-Eyed Joe as George Wilkinson, so you, James
Marmaduke Trevor, will live imperishably in my mind as Doggie. I was
making a sort of apology, old chap, for my habit of mind."

"If it is an apology----" said Marmaduke.

Oliver, laughing, clapped him boisterously on the shoulder. "Oh, you
solemn comic cuss!" He strode to a rose-bowl and knocked the ashes of
his pipe into the water--Doggie trembled lest he might next squirt
tobacco juice over the ivory curtains. "You don't give a fellow a
chance. Look here, tell me, as man to man, what are you going to do
with your life? I don't mean it in the high-brow sense of people who
live in unsuccessful