If a pal was determined not to confide and get invaluable advice, what was the use of going for him with a can opener?
But one good look at the face whose every expression he knew so well convinced him that something was very much the matter.

"Why, good Lord," he said to himself, "the old thing looks as if he'd been working night and day for an examination and had been plucked.

I wonder which of the two girls is at the back of all this,--the wife or the other ?" Rumors had reached his way about both.
"What do you want to do ?" he asked.
"I don't care," said Martin.

"Any damn thing so long as it's something with somebody.

What's it matter ?" He didn't quite manage to hide the little quiver in his voice, and it came to Howard Oldershaw for the first time how young they both were to be floundering on the main road, himself with several entanglements and money worries, his friend married and with another complication.