Bennie has."

"Such as?"

"Well, for one thing, he wants to get away. He doesn't seem quite
content with his job of idle aristocrat. I believe he's been pestering
the old man to send him West. Old man doesn't approve."

"'That the fine bloom of culture will become rubbed off in the contact
with rude, rough men, seems to me inevitable,'" mimicked Bert in
pedantic tones, "'unless a firm sense of personal dignity and an
equally firm sense of our obligations to more refined though absent
friends hedges us about with adequate safeguards.'"

The four laughed. "That's his style, sure enough," Jim agreed.

"What does he want to do West?" asked Hench.

"_He_ doesn't know. Write a book, I believe, or something of that sort.
But he _isn't_ an ass. He has a lot of good stuff in him, only it will
never get a chance, fixed the way he is now."

A silence fell, which was broken at last by Bert.

"Come, Jeems," he suggested; "here we've taken up Hench's valuable
idea, but are no farther with it."

"True," said Jeems.

He rolled over on his hands and knees. Bert took up a similar position