"Yuh'll be sum sadder if yuh don't keep yuah hooks on yuah side of the table!" warned Red, sinisterly, as he successfully repelled a similar assault on his own reserves. "Yuh moon-faced pie-eater, what yuh got to be sad about 'ceptin' thet yuh are alive?"
"Why," said Woolly, with well-feigned sympathy, "don't yuh know thet Punk's hed a great sorrer? He's been yirrigatin' the hull dum ranch with hes tears ontil yuh-ve gotter wear gum butes to git around in! Why, he's weeped so hawd thet hes years has got washed clean for oncet!"
Holy chortled in blasphemous delight as Woolly went on: "Punk's been lef stranded on thu shoals o' woe. He's stah o' happiness is sot 'an' thu mune o' he's desiah won't rise no moah! Thu light has gone outen he's young life an' he's tooken to writin' potery an' herdin' by hisself. He was tooken thet way early this mawnin' an' hes mizzery hes been suthin' scand'lous. He's made up a leetle pome all outen hes own haid thet would make a Ute cry. Speak it for us, Punk, won't yuh!"
Punk sighed dolorously and rested his head on his bowed arms. Then he raised it again and with a comical imitation of Douglass's abstraction looked into vacancy. Holy was gurgling ecstatically, his delight finding vent in a yell of irrepressible joy as Punk fumbled twistingly with his bare upper lip in emulation of Douglass's impatient twirls of his mustache.
His wandering thoughts recalled by that raucous guffaw, Douglass glared with cold disfavor at the twain, somehow realizing that he was more or less concerned in their horse-play. "What's the matter with you damn fools?" he asked, incautiously.
Punk looked at him in anguished protestation, shook his head in hopeless despondency and wailed:
"Oh! Gawd—haow kin I stand it? Haow kin I?"
Woolly looked at Douglass reproachfully. "To be sworn at in thet heartless way, an' him so young and gentle!" He put his arm sympathetically about Punk's shoulders; Red's eyes were twinkling in anticipation.
"Thar! thar! ole man! Don't yuh take it so hawd."
Punk laid his head wearily on Woolly's breast. Then as Holy and Red almost cried in their hilarity, he clasped his hands and crooned with heart-rending pathos: