Despite Bert Stanley’s crudities and carelessness and boisterousness, he had no mean capacity for friendship. He was fond of Kendall Ware with that sort of friendship which one so often finds in men of his character for others of finer fiber. He did not understand Kendall, nor did he try overly hard to understand him; it was enough that he liked him and rather admired him. Sometimes his attitude toward his friend was of humorous tolerance. He laughed to himself when Ken took some slight affair with gravity and seriousness. He thought Ken was a bit queer and moody. As for himself, he took things as they presented themselves and made the best of it, not inquiring into causes and not caring about results unless there was a possibility of their presenting themselves in too unpleasant fashion. For instance, he had seen Kendall thrown into somber mood by a discussion of the unhappy future of hundreds of thousands of French girls deprived of men with whom to marry. Of course it did look a bit tough on the women, Bert thought, but what can you expect? And what could one do about it? He put this thought into words. “Do about it?” Kendall replied, gloomily. “That’s the devil of it—there’s nothing that can be done about it. They’re just up against it.... Poor devils!” “Oh, it’ll come out all right somehow,” Bert said, with a shrug. “They’ll find men somewhere.” “Find men!... There aren’t any men. You can’t take a stick and whittle out men.” “Then what in thunder is the use worrying about it? It’s so, and that’s all there is to it. No use getting gloomy.” “But it makes me gloomy. It’s so rotten unfair. It’s horrible. Just think of what it means to them!...” “Just don’t think about it and you’ll be better off.” It was this sort of thing that Bert failed to understand. He could imagine a man worrying because he was out of a job, or because he had broken his leg, or because his house was on fire; but why anybody should go out of his way to fuss over something that seemed to him like a rather distant abstraction, he failed to comprehend. But Ken always did it.