"What was there to say?"
"You packed me off to the life class last night so you could—"
"That was for your own good!"
"Come off! Come off! Have I such a trusting eye? On the level why didn't you tell me before?"
What was Evan to say. He began an explanation that was no explanation. Charley's sharp eyes bored him through and through.
"By the Lord!" cried the latter at last, "Old Stony-heart has melted! St. Anthony has fallen for the caloric tresses. Touched where he lives, by Gad! Brought low and humbled in the dust!"
Evan grinned painfully. "Don't be a fool!" he muttered.
"How does it feel?" asked Charley with mock solicitude, "a dull ache in the epigastrium or a fluttering sensation in the pericardium; some lay stress on the characteristic feeling of heaviness behind the occiput."
"You wheeze like a vaudeville performer on small time," growled Evan.
Charley roared. He did not often get his partner on the grill like this. It was generally the other way about. But in the midst of his outrageous joshing it suddenly struck the warm-hearted Charley that under his game grin Evan was suffering very pretty torments. Charley jumped up and for the briefest of seconds laid his hand on his partner's shoulder.