"I am not handicapped with any such nonsense, thank Heaven," growled Dick. "But if I was, by Jove, I wouldn't be fool enough to do any work for her sake, as so many misguided men do. No, sir, I'd take life easily and keep my figure, as our trans-Atlantic cousins do. I'd spend my days with the daughter and live on the old man. That is what girls like, and they do have some sense." "That is perfect rot," exclaimed the poetic Gray, expressing his roused sentiment with more force than grace. "Life to-day is just what it was in the days of chivalry. A true knight must prove his love with his lance, and win his wife like a man." "There you go, of course," answered Stoughton; "clap your leg over Pegasus, and off across country, regardless of hedges and ditches, or the narrow roads of commerce. Suppose his lance got busted, as was frequently the case?" "Sic 'im, sic 'im," chuckled Burleigh. "We have got the poet and the cynic by the ears. Oh, this is lovely!" "Both of 'em amateurs," added Holworthy, "and neither knowing what he is talking about." "Two to one on the poet, though," said Randolph. "He is always in earnest, anyway." "Shake hands, gents," said Rattleton, getting interested. "Time." "Now just listen to me," said Dick, tilting back his chair and waving his fork pedantically. "I'll give you a really accurate picture of your dear days of chivalry, such as you never got out of a romance." "Silence for Sir Walter Stoughton's account of a tourney," commanded Burleigh. "Steve Hudson, pull that pup of yours off the table; she'll upset the milk pitcher." "I have just been reading all about that sort of game," interrupted Rattleton. "Seems to me they were a most unsporting lot. They had no classes or handicaps; just lumped 'em all in together, feather-weights and heavy-weights. No idea of a fair thing." "Shut up your childish prattle, Jack," commanded Burleigh. "If you will push your researches far enough you will find that the little fellows always won. The giants invariably got the heads smote off 'em. We are not on the brutal subject of prize-fighting, we are on chivalry. You know nothing about that, so keep quiet and let Dick go on."