"You have no ambition whatever?" "By that sin fell the angels--and look at them now!" "Why not take a whirl at law?" Boland sat up stiffly. "Mr. Sedgwick," he observed with exceeding bitterness, "you go too far. Take back your ring! Henceforth we meet as str-r-r-rangers!" "Ever think of writing? You do enough reading, Heaven knows." Mr. Boland relapsed to a sagging sprawl; he adjusted his finger tips to touch with delicate nicety. "Modesty," he said with mincing primness, "is the brightest jewel in my crown. Litter and literature are not identical, really, though the superficial observer might be misled to think so. And yet, in a higher sense, perhaps, it may almost be said, with careful limitations, that, considering certain delicate _nuances_ of filtered thought, as it were, and making meticulous allowance for the personal equation--" "Grisly ass! Well, then, what's the matter with the army?" "My prudence is such," responded Mr. Boland dreamily--"in fact, my prudence is so very such, indeed--one may almost say so extremely such--not to mention the pertinent and trenchant question so well formulated by the little Peterkin--" "Why don't you marry?" "Ha!" said Francis Charles. "Whachamean--'Ha'?" "I mean what the poet meant when he spoke so feelingly of the "------eager boys Who might have tasted girl's love and been stung." "Didn't say it. Who?" "Did, too! William Vaughn Moody. So I say 'Ha!' in the deepest and fullest meaning of the word; and I will so defend it with my life." "If you were good and married once, you might not be such a fool," said Sedgwick hopefully. "Take any form but this"--Mr. Boland inflated his chest and held himself oratorically erect--"and my firm nerves shall never tremble! I have tracked the tufted pocolunas to his lair; I have slain the eight-legged galliwampus; I have bearded the wallipaloova in his noisome den, and gazed into the glaring eyeballs of the fierce Numidian liar; and I'll try everything once--except this. But I have known too many too-charming girls too well. To love them," said Francis Charles sadly, "was a business education." He lit a cigar, clasped his hands behind his head, tilted his chair precariously, and turned a blissful gaze to the little rift of sky beyond the crowding maples. Mr. Boland was neither tall nor short; neither broad nor slender; neither old nor young. He wore a thick mop of brown hair, tinged with chestnut in the sun. His forehead was broad and high and white and shapely. His eyes were deep-set and wide apart, very innocent, very large, and very brown, fringed with long lashes that any girl might envy. There the fine chiseling ceased. Ensued a nose bold and broad, freckled and inclined to puggishness; a wide and generous mouth, quirky as to the corners of it; high cheek bones; and a square, freckled jaw--all these ill-assorted features poised on a strong and muscular neck.