Why ?" asked Barclay, bluntly.

He had discovered even that early in life that a circuitous man is generally knocked off his guard by a rush.

Brown well blinked and sputtered a second or two, scrambling to his equilibrium.

Before he could parry Barclay assaulted him again with: "Starving to death, eh?
Lost your grip--going back to Alabama with the banjo on your knee, are you ?" "No, sir--no, sir, you are entirely wrong, sir--entirely wrong, and scarcely more polite, either." Brown well paused a minute and added: "Business is entirely satisfactory, sir--entirely so.

It is another matter." He hesitated a moment and added, with the ghost of a smirk, "A matter of sentiment--for-- "'The heart that is soonest awake to the flowers, Is always the first to be touched by the thorns.'" Brownwell sat there flipping his gloves, exasperatingly; Barclay screwed up his eyes, put his head on one side, and suddenly a flash came into his face and he exclaimed, "Come off, you don't mean it--not Molly!" The rejected one inclined his head.