ps back.

"Eh?" says Nutt. "Sorry, old man; but you know, up at the camp summer
before last--why, everyone called you Sukey."

"A lot of bounders they were too!" flares out Blair. "I--I'd asked them
not to. And I'll not stand it! So there!"

"Oh!" says Hamilton, grinnin' tantalizin'. "My error. I take back the
Sukey, _Mr._ Hiscock."

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."

"Any