Americans he was rare in his gift of according to women equality
not only of liberty, but of understanding and good sense, and it
went like wine to the heads of some we had met, so that Will was
seldom without a sex-problem on his hands and ours. But Will was
too good a comrade to be surrendered to any woman lightly.

"Damn that chicken!" murmured Fred by way of praying fervently, pausing
in the breach in the wall to rub his shin. "Feel that bruise, will
you! No young woman ever brought me luck yet!"

"What are you waiting for?" complained a voice from outer darkness.
"Come on, you rummies!"

Fred sat down on the protruding stone that had injured his shin,
and detained me with his arm across the opening.

"Mark my words! In order that that young woman may be educated to
consider Will Yerkes a paragon of unimaginable virtues, we--you and
I--are going to have to do what he calls 'hustle.' We're going to
see speed, and we're going to sweat, trying to catch up. There isn't
a scatterbrained adventure conceivable that we're not going to be
forced into, nor an imaginable peril that we're not going to have
to pull him out of. We're going to be cursed for our trouble, and
ridiculed to make amusement for her majesty. And at the end of it
all we're going to be patronized for a couple of ignorant damned
fools who don't know better than be bachelors. What's worse, we're
going to submit tamely. What is infinitely worse, we're going to
like it! There are times when I doubt the sanity of my whole sex!"

"Have you guys taken root?" demanded the familiar voice and we heard