“Who the deuce is that bounder Pentridge, Holt?” he said to me one day when we were alone together.
“First, I don’t know. Second, he’s rather a good chap.”
“Eh? Rather a good chap? Man alive! I should have thought if any one would wish him to the devil it’d be you.”
“Well, I don’t. I like the chap,” I rejoined, shortly.
Trask fired off a long whistle.
“That’s good,” he said. “That’s good, coming from you of all people, Holt. Why he’s cutting you out all along the line.”
Then I fired off a speech.
“I won’t pretend to misunderstand you, Trask,” I said. “But that sort of remark is in the rottenest taste, in fact downright caddish. And look here. For a good while past you have laid yourself out to try and make me a butt for your stodgy wit. Well, I’ve had enough of that—more than enough. So chuck it. See? Chuck it.”
“Oh, all right, Holt. Keep your hair on, old man. How beastly ‘short’ you’ve got in these days. You usen’t to be.”
There was an insinuation here conveyed that did not tend to soothe me, but possibly it was unintentional. Trask had a way of climbing down if tackled direct, that disarmed resentment. To do him justice, I don’t think it was due to cowardice, but to a feeling that he had gone too far, and a natural shrinking on the part of a man not actually drunk or an idiot, from the possibility of being made to look foolish in a row of his own bringing on.