After so many mutual experiences of good and evil, the catguts about our tough old hearts are loosened, and discourse the pleasant music of Friendship.

He added carelessly, bouncing a ball up and down on the tense catgut of his racquet: "What all you girls see in that old wolf-hound, to lose your heads over!

Now Mike himself was a sad musician, and the sound of him fandangoin' uncertainly up and down the fretful spine of that instrument was a tribulation I'd put up with on account of friendship, pure and simple, but when that discord-lovin' lady cliff-dweller set all evenin' in our tent and scraped snake-dances out of them catguts with a fish-bone, I pulled my freight and laid out in the moonlight with the dogs.