Dolly had tears in her eyes almost, and her voice was very dolorous. For the fourteenth time in two weeks, she was treating the singular shoulders of Charles-Norton. He was sitting beneath the glow of the evening lamp, his coat off, his shirt pulled down to his elbows; and she, standing behind the chair, was leaning solicitously over him. A wisp of her hair caressed his right ear, but somehow did not relax his temper. "Well, let them alone, Dolly," he growled; "let them alone. Good Lord, let them alone!" For two weeks he had been getting more and more peevish. To be sure, for two weeks, daily, his shoulders had been washed and rubbed and massaged and lotioned and parboiled and anointed and fomented and capsicon-plastered, till his very soul was sensitive and a suspicion was agrowl within him--a bad, mean feeling that Dolly was finding a bit, just a bit, of something akin to pleasure in the ardor of her ministrations. Besides, he was fighting a moral fight of his own. Great bursts of dissatisfaction swept through him every day now; and it was only by a constant vigilance that he kept his vagrant elbows close to his ribs. "Let them be for a while, Dolly," he repeated in gentler tone. "Besides--besides----" But he left unsaid the thought following the "besides." "Now, dear," said Dolly, kindly, but with a certain firmness; "you've simply got to let me see what I can do. Why, Goosie, you can't go on in this way! You'd be getting humps on your back! No--no; we'll try a nice little ice-pack to-night." "I don't want any ice-packs!" yelped Charles-Norton (what a bad-mannered young man he had become!); "I'm tired of fomentations and things! Besides"--and this time the besides did not pause, but burst out of him like a stream from a high-pressure hydrant--"besides, it isn't what I want----" And to an irresistible impulse his right hand reached out for a brush and, crossing over to his left shoulder, began rubbing it vigorously. "Goosie, Goosie, my clothes-brush, my best clothes-brush!" But the lament in Dolly's voice had little effect upon Charles-Norton. He was brushing himself with grave concentration. "Get the flesh-brush," he mumbled between set teeth, rubbing the while; "Gee, this feels good. Get the pack to-night." Dolly ran into the bath-room and returned with the flesh-brush; Charles-Norton made an exchange without losing a stroke. "That's something like it," he murmured. "But, Goosie," began Dolly. Her voice was low now; she stood withdrawn from him as if a bit afraid; her hands were clasped and her lips trembled. "Goosie, dear; don't do that. Oh, don't; you'll hurt yourself. It's getting all red, Goosie. You're rubbing the skin off, I tell you. Why, it's almost bleeding--Goosie, Goosie, stop it, stop it!" "Feels lots better," he said unfeelingly. "Look at it." And transferring the brush to his left hand, he began to rub the right shoulder, raising his left for Dolly's inspection.