“Why,” said Carson, “he wants to feel that he has money to retire on.”
Ready threw up his hands, uttered a terrible groan, and fell heavily on Bruce Browning, who was stretched on the couch. He rebounded with a springing movement, however, and leaped away in time to escape a kick from the big senior’s heavy foot.
“Please have your fits elsewhere!” rumbled Bruce, with a glare at Jack, who was bowing profoundly and humbly craving pardon.
“I don’t know where else I can find anything so soft to fall on,” declared Ready.
“Say,” smiled Bruce, “will you find a way to repress your idiocy for a short time?”
“Idiocy!” exclaimed Jack, with an expression of despair. “Did I hear aright? And only yesterday I had not been talking to him five minutes before he called me an ass.”
“Why the delay?” grunted Browning.
“That reminds me of something I said the last time I attended the theater,” Ready asserted. “The play was over, the orchestra was playing a lively march, all the people were moving toward the doors. I looked up, and right over one of those doors I saw the word ’exit’ in large gilt letters. Then I said something real witty.”
“What could it be?” murmured Dashleigh.
“I said, ‘That lets me out,’” explained Jack. “Ha! ha! ha! That’s what you call pure, unadulterated wit. Have a laugh with me! Ha! ha! Why, I’m budding into a second Sydney Smith, and Syd was the real thing.”