A trifle noisily the Older Man jerked his chair around and, slouching down into his shabby gray clothes, with his hands thrust deep into his pockets, his feet shoved out before him, sat staring at his companion. Furrowed abruptly from brow to chin with myriad infinitesimal wrinkles of perplexity, his lean, droll face looked suddenly almost monkeyish in its intentness.
"What does a fellow like you come to a place like this for?" he asked bluntly.
"Why—tennis," conceded the Younger Man. "A little tennis. And golf—a little golf. And—and—"
"And—girls," asserted the Older Man with precipitous conviction.
Across the Younger Man's splendidly tailored shoulders a little flicker of self-consciousness went crinkling. "Oh, of course," he grinned. "Oh, of course I've got a vacationist's usual partiality for pretty girls. But Great Heavens!" he began, all over again. "Of all the stupid—!"
"But you live like such a fool—of course you're bored," resumed the Older Man.
"There you are at it again!" stormed the Younger Man with tempestuous resentment.
"Why shouldn't I be 'at it again'?" argued the Older Man mildly. "Always and forever picking out the showiest people that you can find—and always and forever being bored to death with them eventually, but never learning anything from it—that's you! Now wouldn't that just naturally suggest to any observing stranger that there was something radically idiotic about your method of life?"
"But that Miss Von Eaton looked like such a peach!" protested the Younger Man worriedly.
"That's exactly what I say," droned the Older Man.