details it occurred to the host that his guest was less
than usually responsive; a fault not to be lightly condoned under the
joyous circumstances. Wherefore he protested.
"What's the matter with you to-night, Kenneth, old man? You're more than
commonly grumpy, it seems to me; and that's needless."
Griswold took the last roll from the joint bread-plate and buttered it
methodically.
"Am I?" he said. "Perhaps it is because I am more than commonly hungry.
But go on with your joy-talk: I'm listening."
"That's comforting, as far as it goes; but I should think you might say
something a little less carefully polarized. You don't have a chance to
congratulate lucky people every day."
Griswold looked up with a smile that was almost ill-natured, and quoted
cynically: "'Unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have
abundance; but from him that hath not, shall be taken away even that
which he hath.'"
Bainbridge-
's laugh was tolerant enough to take the edge from his retort.
"That's a pretty thing to fling at a man who never knifed you or
pistoled you or tried to poison you! An innocent by-stander might say
you envied me."
"I do," rejoined Griswold gravely. "I envy any man who can earn enough
money to pay for three meals a day and a place to sleep in."
"Oh, cat's foot!--anybody can do that," asserted Bainbridge, with the
air of one to whom the struggle for existence has been a mere athlete's
practice run.
"I know; that is your theory. But the facts disprove it. I can't, for
one."
"Oh, yes, you could, if you'd side-track some of your own theories and
come down to sawing wood like the rest of us. But you won't do that."
Griswold was a fair man, with reddish hair and beard and the quick and
sensitive skin of the type. A red flush of anger crept up under the
closely cropped beard, and his eyes were bright.
"That is not tru-