But won't he revel in you, old boy!" "I don't know about that," said Linklater gloomily.

"I've a kind of feeling that I've dropped out of this combination." "What ?" Then Martin fell upon him.
But if Martin's attempts to relieve his friend of melancholy forebodings were not wholly successful, Dunn's shout of joy and his double-handed shake as he grappled Linklater to him, drove from that young man's heart the last lingering shade of doubt as to his standing with his friends.
On his way home Dunn dropped into Martin's diggings for a "crack," and for an hour the three friends reviewed the summer's happenings, each finding in the experience of the others as keen a joy as in his own.
Linklater's holiday had been the most fruitful in exciting incident.
For two months he and his crew had dodged about among quaint Norwegian harbours and in and out of fjords of wonderful beauty.

Storms they had weathered and calms they had endured; lazy days they had spent, swimming, fishing, loafing; and wild days in fighting gales and high-running seas that threatened to bury them and their crew beneath their white-topped mountainous peaks.
"I say, that must have been great," cried Dunn with enthusiastic delight in his friend's experiences.
"It sounds good, even in the telling," cried Martin, who had been listening with envious ears.

"Now my experiences are quite other.

One word describes them, grind, grind, grind, day in and day out, in a gallant but futile attempt to justify the wisdom of my late examiners in granting me my Triple." "Don't listen to him, Linklater," said Dunn.