“Dud Baker, over here.” Jimmy’s glance indicated his friend. “We were talking about the hockey team losing so many games one day and Dud said he guessed the trouble with them”—Jimmy had managed to gain the attention of the room by now—“was that they were weak from Star-vation!”
Dud looked anything but like the author of the bonmot at that moment, but the audience laughed, even Ned Musgrave, and Jimmy credited himself with a bull’s-eye.
“The pun,” observed Nick Blake gravely, “is considered the lowest form of humor.”
“I think that’s mighty clever,” exclaimed Hugh. “You’re hipped because you didn’t think of it yourself, Nick.”
“Dry up, ’Ighness! I was about to say when you so rudely interrupted that it is, of course, necessary to consider one’s audience, and that, having the mentality of the audience in mind, Baker’s joke may be considered clever, even brilliant. For my part——”
“Choke him, somebody,” said Bert. “After all, say what you like about Star, you’ve got to acknowledge that there’s much to ad-Meyer about——”
But Nick’s groan of anguish drowned the rest, and Dresser, pretending disgust, arose to depart, setting the example for several others. Jimmy, fearing that Dud’s gloomy silence might undo the effect created by the joke, thought the moment a good one for retiring and led his chum away. Outside, Dud remonstrated again.
“I wish you wouldn’t, Jimmy,” he said. “I feel such an awful fool when you spring those jokes and tell fellows I made ’em. They must know I didn’t!”
“Why? You do say things as good as that, don’t you? When there’s no one but me around, I mean.”