“No, but we’ll let it go at that,” snarled Merritt. “When I’ve got a chum I don’t want no partners in him, ’n I won’t have ’em neither, see. You can thank all ye want to, but no chummin’.” And he turned away.
C. B. looked bewildered from one to the other, and then went on with his work, with a deep sigh of despair at his inability to comprehend this peculiarly selfish form of affection.
He could see, however, that it behoved him to be careful in his i*********e with others, no matter how friendly they might be, not that he felt the least fear of Merritt, but that he realized to the full that the latter’s love for him had humanized and made gentle a nature essentially savage and morose. He felt in a very special measure responsible for Merritt, having an indefinable idea that he might one
