“I’m sticking to it still.”
“Bosh!”
Then Poke took a hand. “Tell you what it is, Shark,” said he. “Winter’s all right, in its way; but you can get too much of a good thing. It gets monotonous—leave it to you if it doesn’t.”
The Shark declined to commit himself. “This gang is getting lazy. All it seems to care for is to sit around and tell stories. You’re as good for nothing as a lot of woodchucks stowed away in a hole till spring comes.”
“Well, the woodchuck knows his business,” quoth Step.
“It’s mighty poor business, all the same, for a pack of human beings.”
Trojan Walker laughed softly. “Ha, ha! If you’d like my opinion, Shark, getting mad with the world because you can’t work out a chess problem is worse business still.”
The Shark whipped about to face him. “Can’t work it out, can’t I? Huh! Much you know about it! I’ll show you now—no I won’t, either; you wouldn’t understand.”
“And you would? And that’s what makes you so pleasant to all of us?”
“Who wants to be pleasant to a crowd that just sits around and talks about a city fellow who happens to have more money than he knows what to do with?”