So that is how the Triumvirate started. It was a sonorous, mouth-filling word, and they liked it. Of course, it was only a joke, yet after a week or two they began to sort of believe in it and lost the habit of smiling when they spoke of it. In some manner it came to be accepted that the borrowed slogan of “One for all, all for one!” meant what it said, and while no opportunity had yet presented that called on them metaphorically to draw swords from scabbards and stand shoulder to shoulder against a common enemy, still the spirit was there. This evening, which, to be quite exact, was the evening of the twenty-sixth day of February, Tom, noting that the chessboard had not been set out, looked an inquiry and Loring smiled apologetically. “Let’s not play to-night, Tom,” he said, “if you don’t mind. Wattles beat me just before supper, and now I’d rather do something I’ve got a show at; such as talk. You know they say that conversation is fast becoming a lost art.” “Heck,” said Tom, “I haven’t noticed it. And you wouldn’t think so if you’d heard ‘Alick’ chewing the rag to me this afternoon. Gosh, I’ll bet that guy invented conversation! He knows more words than the dictionary, and he sure can string them together!” “What,” inquired Clif, smiling, “was the subject of Mr. Wyatt’s talk?” “Aw, shut up,” growled Tom. “Say, honest, fellows, what’s the good of learning about a lot of queers that died a hundred years ago? This Washington Irving, for one. What did he ever do for the Republican Party?” “Don’t you like his stuff?” asked Clif maliciously. “Why, I’m getting an awful kick out of it!” Tom said “Humph!” disgustedly and Loring chuckled. “Tom’s what you might call a Modernist,” said the latter. “He prefers his literature fresh, like his rolls. He finds no pleasure in stale bread.” “I’ll say I don’t,” concurred Tom heartily. “Of course some of the old-timers weren’t so punk. That guy Dumas, for instance. And Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s stuff has a lot of punch generally, but you’ve got to buckle down to it. Gosh, they must have had a heap of time in those days, the way they spread the words around!” “Probably got paid by the word,” suggested Clif. “Some of them must have made a pile of dough, then! Alick would have been rich, too, if he’d lived in Shakespeare’s time. I’ll bet that, at five cents a word, he touched me for a hundred dollars this afternoon!” “Why don’t you study your English Lit,” asked Clif, “and not have to listen to Mr. Wyatt’s homilies?” “Study! Heck, I do study! I read all the stuff he tells us to, but it doesn’t _mean_ anything. I had a hunch the first time I set eyes on that chap that I wasn’t going to like him.” “That’s a whopper,” said Clif. “You do like him, Tom. What you don’t like is his line.” “Same thing,” grumbled Tom. “I wish I’d been born a Frenchman or a Slovak or――or something so I wouldn’t have to dig through all this rot.”