He lit a cigar, clasped his hands behind his head, tilted his chair precariously, and turned a blissful gaze to the little rift of sky beyond the crowding maples.

Mr. Boland was neither tall nor short; neither broad nor slender; neither old nor young.  He wore a thick mop of brown hair, tinged with chestnut in the sun.  His forehead was broad and high and white and shapely.  His eyes were deep-set and wide apart, very innocent, very large, and very brown, fringed with long lashes that any girl might envy.  There the fine chiseling ceased.  Ensued a nose bold and broad, freckled and inclined to puggishness; a wide and generous mouth, quirky as to the corners of it; high cheek bones; and a square, freckled jaw—­all these ill-assorted features poised on a strong and muscular neck.

Sedgwick, himself small and dark and wiry, regarded Mr. Boland with a scorning and deprecatory—­but with private approval.

“You’re getting on, you know.  You’re thirty—­past.  I warn you.”

“Ha!” said Francis Charles again.

Sedgwick raised his voice appealingly.

“Hi, Thompson!  Here a minute!  Shouldn’t Francis Charles marry?”

“Ab-so-lute-ly!” boomed a voice within.

The two young men, it should be said, sat on the broad porch of Mitchell House.  The booming voice came from the library.

“Mustn’t Francis Charles go to work?”

In the library a chair overturned with a crash.  A startled silence; then the sound of swift feet.  Thompson came through the open French window; a short man, with a long shrewd face and a frosted poll.  Feigned anxiety sat on his brow; he planted his feet firmly and wide apart, and twinkled down at his young guests.

“Pardon me, Mr. Sedgwick—­I fear I did not catch your words correctly.  You were saying—?”

Francis Charles brought his chair to level and spoke with great feeling: 

“As our host, to whom our bright young lives have been entrusted for a time—­standing to us, as you do, almost as a locoed parent—­I put it to you—­”

“Shut up!” roared Ferdie.  “Thompson, you see this—­this object?  You hear it?  Mustn’t it go to work?”

“Ab-so-lutissimusly!”

“I protest against this outrage,” said Francis Charles.  “Thompson, you’re beastly sober.  I appeal to your better self.  I am a philosopher.  Sitting under your hospitable rooftree, I render you a greater service by my calm and dispassionate insight than I could possibly do by any ill-judged activity.  Undisturbed and undistracted by greed, envy, ambition, or desire, I see things in their true proportion.  A dreamy spectator of the world’s turmoil, I do not enter into the hectic hurly-burly of life; I merely withhold my approval from cant, shams, prejudice, formulae, hypocrisy, and lies.  Such is the priceless service of the philosopher.”

“Philosopher, my foot!” jeered Ferdie.  “You’re a brow!  A solemn and sanctimonious brow is bad enough, but a sprightly and godless brow is positive-itutely the limit!”