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"I a," replied Mr Hicks, in a tone which intirievances he would not knohere to finish

"Pleasant people, aren't they?" Wallie suggested

"So is a erie--after it's eaten"

"They do have appetites," Wallie ad in the open"

"I've cooked for section hands on the Burlington, and they were canary-birds beside these Poland Chinas We had ought to brought troughs instead of tinware"

"You uests," Wallie reprimanded

Hicks went on wrathfully: "That fat sister in the cameo breastpin--she swiped a can of potted chicken on ular 'camp-robber'"

Wallie interposed hastily: "We h this trip peaceably In fact, Mr Hicks, it's along this line that I wished to have a ith you"

Mr Hicks looked at him quickly and suspiciously

"Has any of 'e a furtive eye about as he did so for the , Mr Hicks, but it has been suggested--I have been thinking that it ht be pleasanter for you and Red to have your own table"

Mr Hicks stopped turning over the potatoes and looked at him for what seemed to Wallie a full minute

"In other words," he said, finally, in a voice that was oily and coaxing, as if he wanted the truth froler to eat with them?"

Wallie noticed uneasily that while Hicks spoke he was tentatively feeling the edge of the knife he had been using Instinctively Wallie's eyes sought the route he had selected, as he replied conciliatingly: "No reflection upon you and Red is intended, Mr Hicks; it is just that Eastern people have different custoree with them"

There was another silence, in which Hicks continued to thumb the knife in a manner that kept Wallie at a tension, then he said with a suavity which so than an outburst: "Perhaps it would be better for us rough-necks to eat at the second table It hadn't occurred to entlelad you mentioned it"

Hicks see--like the velvet touch of a tiger--and his humble acceptance of the situation was so unnatural that Wallie felt hiround-glass in the sugar, he wondered, or dropping a spider in so?