“Oh, Ellis is such a God awful fool,--I’d break his face if he was bigger!” Wolcott looked at the fire a moment, and thoughtfully stroked one of his bare arms. “I got this, to-night.” He took a letter from the mantelpiece and dropped it into Haydock’s lap. Haydock read it while The Magnificent One got into his pyjamas before the fire. The letter had nothing whatever to do with Ellis. Not that Haydock supposed it had; logical sequence in any two of Wolcott’s remarks always surprised him. It was a tactfully worded appeal from Barrows, the Recording Secretary, telling, with simple realism that somehow or other stayed by one after the letter was back in its envelope, of a fine, keen, scholarly fellow in the sophomore class who had been found, literally starving, a stone’s throw from the College Yard. “What do you think, Boy?” asked Wolcott, indifferently. “I wonder who it is,” mused Haydock. The Secretary’s omission of the man’s name hadn’t interested Wolcott in the least. “Why didn’t he keep away, damn his soul?” he said. “Well, he’s here,--that’s the main thing.” “And Barrows wants me to give him a yacht and some polo ponies, and keep him in cigars and golf sticks.” Haydock made an inarticulate sound of assent between puffs. He knew perfectly well that Wolcott wanted his advice, that in his characteristic way he was asking it. He also knew, for his liking was an intelligent one, how to give it. “Well, I call it pretty nervy,” grumbled Sears. “Oh, yes--yes--it’s nervy.” One simply had to agree with Wolcott in all minor points in order to get anywhere. “I don’t like to have my leg pulled any more than anybody else does.” “No, I shouldn’t think you would. But I imagine they’d have difficulty if they tried to play any little games like that with you,” Haydock added, confidently. No one objects to being talked to this way by a slightly older person who is no fool himself. “I’d like to see them try!” growled the other. “They know better.” “What do you call that, then?” Wolcott pointed with his toe to the letter in Haydock’s lap. “Oh--that!” Haydock’s manner was most off-hand, “that’s merely the penalty of prominence and wealth. It’s tiresome, of course, this having to come up to the scratch all your life. You know--sometimes I’m mighty glad I’m not so powerful as you are--not in a position to do as much for people, because I think--of course you never can tell--but I think I’d be the kind of person to try to do it every now and then.” “This sort of thing would be perfect fruit for you, wouldn’t it?” “I’m inclined to think the poor devil would stop starving for a while.” “How much would you give him, old Haystack, if you weren’t such a dirty beggar yourself?” After absorbing a certain amount of Haydock’s flattery, Wolcott always began to radiate a sort of bantering amiability.