“The mother is always impressing him with the fact that he is a de Laney on both sides,” interpolated Bert.

“Important, if true, as the newspapers say,” remarked the other young man on the window ledge.  “What constitutes a de Laney?”

“Hereditary lack of humour, Beck, my boy.  Well, the result is that poor Bennie is a sort of——­” the speaker hesitated for his word.

“‘Willy boy,’” suggested Beck, mildly.

“Something of the sort, but not exactly.  A ‘willy boy’ never has ideas.  Bennie has.”

“Such as?”

“Well, for one thing, he wants to get away.  He doesn’t seem quite content with his job of idle aristocrat.  I believe he’s been pestering the old man to send him West.  Old man doesn’t approve.”

“’That the fine bloom of culture will become rubbed off in the contact with rude, rough men, seems to me inevitable,’” mimicked Bert in pedantic tones, “’unless a firm sense of personal dignity and an equally firm sense of our obligations to more refined though absent friends hedges us about with adequate safeguards.’”

The four laughed.  “That’s his style, sure enough,” Jim agreed.

“What does he want to do West?” asked Hench.

“He doesn’t know.  Write a book, I believe, or something of that sort.  But he isn’t an ass.  He has a lot of good stuff in him, only it will never get a chance, fixed the way he is now.”

A silence fell, which was broken at last by Bert.

“Come, Jeems,” he suggested; “here we’ve taken up Hench’s valuable idea, but are no farther with it.”

“True,” said Jeems.

He rolled over on his hands and knees.  Bert took up a similar position by his side.

“Go!” shouted Hench from the window ledge.

At the word, the two on the mattress turned and grappled each other fiercely, half rising to their feet in the strenuousness of endeavour.  Jeems tried frantically for a half-Nelson.  While preventing it the wily Bert awaited his chance for a hammer-lock.  In the moment of indecision as to which would succeed in his charitable design, a knock on the door put an end to hostilities.  The gladiators sat upright and panted.

A young man stepped bashfully into the room and closed the door behind him.

The newcomer was a clean-cut young fellow, of perhaps twenty-two years of age, with regular features, brown eyes, straight hair, and sensitive lips.  He was exceedingly well-dressed.  A moment’s pause followed his appearance.  Then: 

“Why, it’s our old friend, the kid!” cried Jeems.

“Don’t let me interrupt,” begged the youth diffidently.

“No interruption.  End of round one,” panted Jeems.  “Glad you came.  Bertie, here, was twisting my delicate clavicle most cruelly.  Know Hench and Beck there?”

De Laney bowed to the young men in the window, who removed their pipes from their mouths and grinned amiably.