"Lazy, you mean."

"I always imagined it was an euphemism."

"My father, sir, your grandfather, old Isaac Bellew, killed a man
with a blow of his fist when he was sixty-nine years old."

"The man?"

"No, your--you graceless scamp! But you'll never kill a mosquito at
sixty-nine."

"The times have changed, oh, my avuncular. They send men to state
prisons for homicide now."

"Your father rode one hundred and eighty-five miles, without
sleeping, and killed three horses."

"Had he lived to-day, he'd have snored over the course in a
Pullman."

The older man was on the verge of choking with wrath, but swallowed
it down and managed to articulate:

"How old are you?"

"I have reason to believe-"

"I know. Twenty-seven. You finished college at twenty-two. You've