"Huh! Barnacles! I'll bet that's the Trio," laughed Billy.
"Lot Jones knows about barnacles," sniffed MacLester.
"That so? Listen to my letter: 'The insectivorous barnacles on the face of nature'—meaning Gaines and his bunch, of course—'them would-be cutaneous young billy goats'—meaning Gaines and the rest again—'have hurled their preposterous physiognomy unfrequented and unbid into this locality.'"
A merry laugh greeted Paul's conclusion and he grinned his own delight with himself.
"Still, I bet he don't know what a barnacle is," persisted Dave with good-natured derision.
"Why, you certain species of shell fish! What do you mean by your insolence?" demanded Jones, with mock dignity. "Barnacles—from the Latin word 'barn,' meaning a kind of stable, and the Greek word 'culls,' meaning an inferior kind of anything. Together, then, barnacles—an inferior kind of stable, a—a pig sty, say? So there you have it; but you might have let it go without forcing me to use such a low word as 'pigs' in the presence of gentlemen, just to make myself clear in your laborious mental processes."
Phil and Billy laughed at this sally but went on with their writing. Dave must give one return shot, and it was:
"Jones, if words were water, you'd have been drowned long ago. The way you flounder around in 'em makes me think of a tumble bug climbing upstairs backwards."
Paul responded only with a solemn "Pooh! pooh!" as if he could not take time to notice seriously any such childish prattle. And while it must be admitted that there was nothing at all brilliant or elevating in the exchange of youthful repartee that had taken place, who shall say that both did not profit by it?
They had made each his thrust and parry and, give or take, without a thought of losing temper. They had had a few seconds' practice in quick thinking, which is always desirable. The whole difference between a brain of snap and vim and one both slow and dull, is likely to lie in practice in rapid, accurate work, or the lack of such training, rather than in an original difference in capacity.