ho don't even know
of his existence. And, as a matter of fact, old horse, we haven't time
to waste making friends and being the social pets. Too much to do on
the farm. Strict business is the watchword, my boy. We must be the
keen, tense men of affairs, or, before we know where we are, we shall
find ourselves right in the gumbo.

"I've noticed, Garny, old horse, that you haven't been the whale for
work lately that you might be. You must buckle to, laddie. There must
be no slackness. We are at a critical stage. On our work now depends
the success of the speculation. Look at those damned cocks. They're
always fighting. Heave a stone at them, laddie, while you're up. What's
the matter with you? You seem pipped. Can't get the novel off your
chest, or what? You take my tip and give your brain a rest. Nothing
like manual labour for clearing the brain. All the doctors say so.
Those coops ought to be painted to-day or to-morrow. Mind you, I think
old Derrick would be all right if one persevered--"

"--and didn't call him a fat little buffer and contradict everything he
said and spoil all his stories by breaking in with chestnuts of your
own in the middle," I interrupted with bitterness.

"My dear old son, he didn't mind being called a fat little buffer. You
keep harping on that. It's no discredit to a man to be a fat little
buffer. Some of the noblest men I have met have been fat little
buffers. What was the matter with old Derrick was a touch of liver. I
said to myself, when I saw him eating cheese, 'that fellow's going to
have a nasty shooting pain sooner or later.' I say, laddie, just heave
another rock or two at those cocks, will you. They'll slay each other."

I had hoped, fearing the while that there was not much chance of such a
thing happening, that the professor might get over his feeling of
injury during the night and be as friendly as ever next day. But he was
evidently a man who had no objection whatever to letting the sun go
down upon his wrath, for when I met him on the following morning on the
beach, he cut me in the most uncompromising manner.

Phyllis was with him at the time, and also another girl, who was, I
supposed, from the strong likeness between them, her sister. She had
the same mass of soft brown hair. But to me she appeared almost
commonplace in comparison.

It is never pleasant to be cut dead, even when you have done something
to deserve it. It is like treading on nothing where one imagined a