“Well, I can’t see it!” Ellis was smarting; but he couldn’t relieve himself with the appropriate sharp retort; it didn’t come to him until later on, in bed. “No one has any right to be such a hog,--especially in a club. Besides, I wasn’t talking to him in particular. He needn’t have subscribed, if he didn’t want to; I never expected he would, although almost every one else has. What’s a dollar anyhow?” he shrugged his shoulders. “Yes, what is it?” piped a tiny person, trying to relieve the tension, from the other side of the table. “I haven’t seen one since the first of last February.” “No, but seriously,” demanded Ellis,--he was always demanding something seriously,--“what do you think of a man who does things like that, not only once, but every day--all the time?” “Well, what did he do?” Haydock was never unprepared to take the other side of any argument in which Ellis engaged. “In the first place, he came into the club so quietly that no one but me noticed him. He sat down and read his mail, and didn’t join in the clatter about the class races, because, knowing something about the subject, what the rest of you fellows had to say probably didn’t interest him; and he isn’t a talkative person, ever. Well, then you tried to get him to subscribe to that foolish night school for æsthetic butchers. I confess his answer was not--not exactly urbane. But it’s just possible that your request was ill-timed.” “Don’t you think that’s one trouble with Sears?” piped the tiny one, who had become interested. “He always gives you the feeling that everything you say is ‘ill-timed’!” “The great, big, angry bull!” added Ellis. “And just the other day,” he went on, suddenly remembering another of Wolcott’s atrocities, “he took a letter away from Billy Bemis, held him off with one hand and began to read it,--right out loud in the club; and when Billy snatched it away, Wolcott picked him up and threw him clear across the room on to the divan, and almost broke his back. Now I don’t think that any man who pretends to be a gentleman--” “Oh, write a letter to the ‘Crimson’ about it--” yelled some one who, though trying to read in the next room, apparently could not help following the discussion. “He was probably feeling his oats a little that day,” suggested Haydock, placidly. “Why shouldn’t he? He’s just like a fine stallion snorting around a ten-acre lot.” “Feeling his oats, yes,--that’s all right,” sniffed Ellis. “I suppose he was feeling his oats when he captained his class eleven, and used to curse the men out until everybody talked about it; that is, he cursed out the men who were smaller than himself--if it wasn’t worth his while to keep on the right side of them.” “For Heaven’s sake shut up!” came from the other room, a trifle impatiently. “Aren’t we just a little harsh?” asked some one who had been listening without joining in.