"Keep off!"
Dick, dodging, picked up the first thing his hands rested on and assumed a burlesque attitude of threat as he continued:
"Assault me again with one of your hundred-ton affectionate squeezes, and I'll blow your brains out with this telescope. Throw up your hands!"
"I surrender!"
Masters laughingly fell in with the other's burlesque melodramatic humour; continued:
"I am a bear, but a tamed one. I haven't a squeeze left in me!"
"Perhaps your Royal Highness is saving them up," suggested Dick, his eyes twinkling as he spoke. "I begin to have a grave suspicion—garnered from some of your rambling ravings—that you have designs on my sister!"
"I have, Dick, I have!"
"Open confession is good for the soul! But you don't fool me. I should be false to every sense of brotherly duty if I failed to warn her against your embraces. I shall bear the marks of one of them—on my shoulder—to the grave."
"Dear old Dick!" Masters started forward impulsively: "I am ever so sorry that——"