There's some contrast between the pair as they faces each other,—young Hiscock all bristled up bantam like and glarin' through his student panes; while Nutt Hamilton, who'd make three of him, tilts back easy in the heavy office armchair until he makes it creak, and just chuckles.

He's a chronic josher, Nutt is,—always puttin' up some deep and elaborate game on Mr. Robert, or relatin' by the hour the horse-play stunts he's pulled on others. A bit heavy, his sense of humor is, I judge. His idea of a perfectly good joke is to call up a bald-headed waiter at the club and crack a soft-boiled egg on his White Way, or balance a water cooler on top of a door so that the first party to walk under gets soaked by it,—playful little stunts like that. And between times, when he ain't makin' merry around town, he's off on huntin' trips, killin' things with portable siege guns. You know the kind, maybe.

So we ain't the chummiest trio that could be got together. Blair makes it plain that he has mighty little use for me, and still less for Hamilton. But Nutt seems to get a lot of satisfaction in keepin' him stirred up, winkin' now and then at me when he gets a rise out of Blair; though I must say, so far as repartee went, the little chap had all the best of it.

"Let's see," says Nutt, "what is your specialty? You do something or other, don't you?"

"Yes," says Blair. "Do you?"

"Oh, come!" says Nutt. "You play the violin, don't you?"

"How clever of you to remember!" says Blair. "Sorry I can't reciprocate." And he turns his back.

But you can't squelch Hamilton that way. "Me?" says he. "Oh, potting big game is my fad. I got three caribou last fall, you know, and this spring I'm—say, Sukey,—I beg your pardon, Hiscock,—but you ought to come along with us. Do you good. Put some meat on your bones. We're going 'way up into Montana after black bear and silver-tips. I'd like to see you facing a nine-hundred-pound she bear with——"

"Would you?" cuts in Blair. "You know very well I'd be frightened half to death."

"Oh, well," says Nutt, "we'd stack you up against a cinnamon cub."