rs Van Ness, so sudden that we both sidestepped. "No! Not
lockjaw, worse! _Dignity_!"

"Have you give the mud baths at Hot Springs a play?" I asks.

"Stop it!" he sneers. "Cease that small time comedy! I'm the most
dignified person in the world--the undisputed champion! I'm Frowning
Frank and Imposing Ike rolled into one. It hurts me more than it does
you, but I can't help it! I fail to remember the last time I enjoyed a
hearty laugh and I know it will be a darned long space before I'll
snicker again. My laugher has gone unused for so long that it's
atrophied and won't work. I've tried warming it up by going home at
night and guffawing before the mirror, but the result is only a
mirthless giggle--a ghostly chortle! Of course, I wouldn't dare
attempt to laugh in public!"

"Do what?" asks the Kid.

"Laugh!" answers Van Ness bitterly. "I can't even let myself think of
doing it--why, it would ruin me! My dignity is all I have. It's my
stock in trade and without it I would lose my income! Were I to unbend
and shatter the air with harmless cachinnation, it would be thought at
once that I had been drinking!" He stopped and sighed some more. "It
began ten years ago," he goes on. "I was playing small parts in a
stock company and one week I was cast for a Roman senator. Being
anxious to make good, I made that noble so dignified that the local
critics dismissed the play with a few paragraphs and gave half a column
to my stately bearing! That started it, and from that time I've played
nothing but Romans, kings, governors, cardinals and similar roles,
calling for my infernal talent in the one direction. Mechanically I
grew to playing them _on and off_, yet all the time within me burns the
desire to do rough and tumble, yes, by Heaven, slapstick comedy! But
alas, I lack the moral courage to throw off the yoke!"

"Well, Mister Van Ness--" I begins, when the silence begun to hurt,
"I--"

"Not Van Ness!" he interrupts. "The name is as false as my manner! My
name is Fink, Eddie Fink, and please don't add the Mister. When a lad
I had a nickname, but, alas, I--"

"What was it?" butts in the Kid.

He hesitates.

"Well, it was rather frivolous," he says. "As indeed I was myself--a
happy, carefree youth! The boys called me Foolish--Foolish Fink!" He
throws out his chest like he just realized how he had been honored at
the time.

Me and the Kid both had a coughin' fit.

"Let's go over to Montana Bill'