“He tried him out in half a dozen positions, in every one of which he proved a dead failure. The last was in Mr. Rae's office, a lawyer, you know, Writer, to use your lucid and luminous speech. That experiment proved the climax.” At the memory of that experience Martin laughed loud and long. “It was funny! Mr. Rae, the cool, dignified, methodical, exact man of the law, struggling to lick into shape this haughty Highland chieftain, who in his heart scorned the whole silly business. The result, the complete disorganisation of Mr. Rae's business, and total demoralisation of Mr. Rae's office staff, who one and all swore allegiance to the young chief. Finally, when Mr. Rae had reached the depths of desperation, Cameron graciously deigned to inform his boss that he found the office and its claims quite insupportable.”
“Oh, it must have been funny. What happened?”
“What happened? You bet old Rae fell on his neck with tears of joy, and sent him off with a handsome honorarium, as your gentle speech has it. That was a fortnight ago. Then Dunn, in despair, took Cameron off to his native haunts, and there he is to this day. By the same token, this is the very afternoon that Dunn returns. Let us go to meet him with cornets and cymbals! The unexpected pleasure of your return made me quite forget. But won't he revel in you, old boy!”
“I don't know about that,” said Linklater gloomily. “I've a kind of feeling that I've dropped out of this combination.”
“What?” Then Martin fell upon him.
But if Martin's attempts to relieve his friend of melancholy forebodings were not wholly successful, Dunn's shout of joy and his double-handed shake as he grappled Linklater to him, drove from that young man's heart the last lingering shade of doubt as to his standing with his friends.
On his way home Dunn dropped into Martin's diggings for a “crack,” and for an hour the three friends reviewed the summer's happenings, each finding in the experience of the others as keen a joy as in his own.
Linklater's holiday had been the most fruitful in exciting incident. For two months he and his crew had dodged about among quaint Norwegian harbours and in and out of fjords of wonderful beauty. Storms they had weathered and calms they had endured; lazy days they had spent, swimming, fishing, loafing; and wild days in fighting gales and high-running seas that threatened to bury them and their crew beneath their white-topped mountainous peaks.
“I say, that must have been great,” cried Dunn with enthusiastic delight in his friend's experiences.
“It sounds good, even in the telling,” cried Martin, who had been listening with envious ears. “Now my experiences are quite other. One word describes them, grind, grind, grind, day in and day out, in a gallant but futile attempt to justify the wisdom of my late examiners in granting me my Triple.”