Haydock, of course, was deeply interested in his quiet fashion. Sears told him the bald facts in a casual, indifferent way one afternoon when he was changing his clothes to row. The interview with the Secretary, Haydock was forced to reconstruct as best he could. “Are you going to keep it up right along?” he asked, sceptically. “Why not?” Sears’s tone implied the usual chip on his shoulder. “Well, it’s very good of you,” commented the other, with almost imperceptible exaggeration. “Oh, hell!--now you’re giving me the geehee; I can tell that even if I can’t write anonymous sonnets for the ‘Monthly.’” He gave Haydock one of his athletic tributes of affection. “You know there’s nothing good about it. What difference does it make?” Yet in spite of Wolcott’s characteristic attitude to his indigent unknown,--it was equivalent, briefly, to a shrug of the shoulders,--the two dropped into the habit of talking together about him. They referred to him after a time as “It,” or “Crœsus,” or “The Bloated Bondholder;” and one of Wolcott’s favourite amusements was to describe in detail, with an idiotic brilliancy of invention that Haydock had never given him credit for, what “It” was doing at that particular moment. “‘It’ must be dressing for dinner, don’t you think?” Sears would ask, apropos of nothing at all. “Oh, do you think so,--at six o’clock?” Haydock would take out his watch, and deliberate seriously, “You see he dines at eight, probably, and that gives him just time to get away from the Somerset and take in the last few numbers at the ‘Pop’ Concert.” “Yes,--he won’t care for long dinners this warm weather,” Sears would add; “some clams, a clear soup, a bird, a truffle or two, salad perhaps; all a man really needs of course, but nothing heavy or elaborate.” Or again: “‘It’ had better hurry up and put that boat of his into commission if he wants to get to Poughkeepsie for the race.” “Will he go round with her?” Haydock would consider doubtfully. “Oh, dear, no; he’ll take his car and meet her there. That sailing master of his is a capital man,--perfectly invaluable he’s been to Crœsus. You remember that spring on the Mediterranean?” “Oh, yes, yes, of course, that time!” After some such elaborate bit of fooling, Wolcott would roll on the floor in paroxysms of mirth. And all the while McGaw and Wolcott were spending several hours a week in the same room, translating from the same page. Once when Haydock tiptoed in during a seminar to borrow something, Sears glanced up from the Latin Documents and said: “Crœsus has had a mighty pretty lot of ponies sent up from Virginia,” and Haydock had answered, as he rummaged through the desk:-- “Good work,--I’ll have to look them over.”