She made a face at him, and gave the hammock a vicious twitch which
caused him to rock with some violence for several seconds. As he was
wont pathetically to remark, everyone bullied him because he was small
and possessed only one arm, having shed the other by inadvertence
somewhere on the borders of the Indian Empire.

Certainly Olga--his half-brother's eldest child--treated him with scant
respect, though she never allowed anyone else to be other than polite to
him in her hearing. But then she and Nick had been pals from the
beginning of things, and this surely entitled her to a certain licence
in her dealings with him. Nick, too, was such a darling; he never minded
anything.

Having duly punished him for snubbing her, she returned with serenity to
the work upon her lap.

"You see," she remarked thoughtfully, "the worst of it is he really is
a bit of a genius. And one can't sit on genius--with comfort. It sort of
flames out where you least expect it."

"Highly unpleasant, I should think," agreed Nick.

"Yes; and he has such a disgusting fashion of behaving as if--as if one
were miles beneath his notice," proceeded Olga. "And I'm not a chicken,
you know, Nick, I'm twenty."

"A vast age!" said Nick.

For which remark she gave him another jerk which set him swinging like a