Pemaquid, eh? Say, I'm goin' to hire a guide in Portland and discover that place sometime. I'd like to see Uncle Jimmy again. CHAPTER XVI SCRATCH ONE ON BULGAROO I'd strolled into the front office in my shirt sleeves, and was leanin' against the gym door listenin' to Pinckney and his friend slangin' each other--and, believe me, it's a wonderful gift to be able to throw the harpoon refined and polite that way! "Larry," says Pinckney, lookin' him over reproachful, "you are hopeless. You merely cumber the earth." "Having made an art of being useless," says Larry, "you should be an excellent judge." "You think you flatter me," says Pinckney; "but you don't. I live my life as it comes. You are botching yours." "Hear, hear!" says Larry. "The butterfly sermonizes!" "Insect yourself!" says Pinckney. "My word!" says Larry. "Chucking entomology at me too! Well, have it that I'm a grasshopper. My legs are long enough." "It's your ears that are long, Larry," says Pinckney. "There you go, mixing the metaphor!" says Larry. "So I'm an ass, eh?" "The word strikes me as beautifully descriptive," says Pinckney. "Excuse me," says I, breakin' in, "but is this to a finish? If it is, I'll send out for some throat troches." Larry grins and settles himself back easy in my desk chair. Great lad, this Mr. T. Lawrence Bolan! All he needs is a cape coat and a sugar-loaf hat with a silver buckle to be a stage Irishman. One of these tall, loose-hinged, awkward-gaited chaps, with wavy red hair the color of a new copper pan, also a chin dimple and a crooked mouth. By rights he should have been homely. Maybe he was too; but somehow, with that twisty smile of his workin', and them gray-blue eyes twinklin' at you, the word couldn't be said. "Look at him, Shorty!" says Pinckney. "Six feet of futile clay; a waster of time, money, and opportunity." "The three gifts that a fool tries to save and a wise man spends with a free hand," says Larry. "Give me a cigarette." "How much, now, did you lose to that crowd of bridge sharks last night?" demands Pinckney, passin' over a gold case. "Not my self-respect, anyway," says Larry. "Was I to pass cowardly with a hundred aces in hand? And I had the fun of making that Boomer-Day person quit bidding on eight hearts. How she did glare as she doubled me!" "Set you six hundred, I hear," says Pinckney. "At a quarter the point that's no cheap fun." "Who asks for cheap fun?" says Larry. "I paid the shot, didn't I?" "And now?" asks Pinckney. Larry shrugs his shoulders. "The usual thing," says he; "only it happens a little earlier in the month. I'm flat broke, of course." "Then why in the name of all folly will you not borrow a couple of hundred from me?" demands Pinckney. "Would I pay it back?" says Larry. "No, I would not. So it would be begging, or stealing? You see how awkward that makes it, old chap?" "But, deuce take it! what are you to do for the next three weeks, you know?" insists Pinckney.