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"There he goes," said Slim, "wanting to be king of this trip. What you want is to get your block knocked off, my friend, like kings got in the French Revolution."

There was a faint smile round his loose mouth as he spoke, but Hank glared.

"You think you could do it?" he asked. "Do you think you could knock my block off? What would I be doing while you were having a try?"

So said I:

"I don't know if this is where I serve or not, for I don't know if this is persiflage and idle repartee, or a storm brewing."

Slim got the drift of my remark, but Hank understood it all. He laughed.

"God!" he broke out. "It is good to hear somebody using English again. Persiflage . . . repartee . . . words I have not heard for fifteen years," and then he fell abrooding, and Slim nipped out his cigarette between thumb and forefinger and put it behind his ear. I was going to know them both more intimately in this kind of travel, I could see, than I had known them in the social intercourse between supper and "hitting the hay" at Penny's Pit.