us are grilly worms. How do you manage it? Whatever the state of your
spiritual graces, at least you're growing in purely fleshly ones."

Brenton laughed at the accent of the compliment which unmistakably was
begrudged. Nevertheless, the laugh stopped short at his lips, and his
gray eyes were sober as they looked down upon his friend. The "puffic'
fibbous" was distinctly worse for wear, that morning. His eyes were
heavy, and his wavy hair clung limply about the temples where the
hollows were showing more and more clearly with every passing day. He
was growing whiter, too, with the uncanny waxiness of a surface lighted
from within. The absolute confinement and the pitiless heats of summer
were telling on the "puffic' fibbous ", reducing him to the merest
shell of his old-time self, and yet the shell was by no means hollow.
Within it still lurked the old magnetic Reed, plucky, indomitable.

"You're positively waxing fat, you healthy beggar," he went on, before
Brenton could speak; "and Keltridge had the nerve to tell me he had
been giving you a tonic. What went wrong? Digestion, the scourge of
parsons? Or were you pining for your customary adulation, denied you
now those college girls have gone off for the summer?" The lazy voice
was full of contentment in its own mockery. To hear Reed speaking, one
would have been sure that the world was all before him, waiting at his
idle feet.

Brenton's answer echoed the selfsame note.

"Adulation, Opdyke! I'm a hard-worked clergyman, and target for more
criticism than you engineers have ever dreamed of."

"Much you are! But do sit down. You make me want to get up, too, when
you rage around like that. No; not that stuffed chair. It's too hot.
Try that cane thing, and, while you're about it, there's a siphon in
that ice chest over there. So far as I've discovered, that's the one
decent thing about being knocked out in summer; they're in honour bound
to have an iced supply-place handy. But, about the adulation, I know
whereof I speak. The average college girl hasn't a softly wooing voice,
and I haven't spent my time lurking here invisible for nothing. The
little dears have favoured me with their views of most things and all
men, myself included. It has been done quite unconsciously; I know that
because of the flavour of some of their remarks as concerned myself."
And, contrary to his custom, Reed laughed bitterly. "As for you,
Brenton, I wonder you're not as bad as Baalam's ass. I