Page:Leon Wilson - Ruggles of Red Gap.djvu/63

Rh But here's your drink, Sour-dough. Maybe it will cheer you up."

Extraordinary! I mean to say, biting through nails.

"Three rousing cheers!" exclaimed Cousin Egbert with more animation than I had ever known him display.

"Here's looking at you, Colonel," said his friend to me, whereupon I partook of the drink, not wishing to offend him. Decidedly he was not vogue. His hat was remarkable, being of a black felt with high crown and a wide and flopping brim. Across his waistcoat was a watch-chain of heavy links, with a weighty charm consisting of a sculptured gold horse in full gallop. That sort of thing would never do with us.

"Here, George," he immediately called to the waiter, for they had quickly drained their glasses, "tell the bar-tender three more. By gosh! but that's good, after the way I've been held down."

"Me, too," said Cousin Egbert. "I didn't know how to say it in French."

"The Reverend held me down," continued the Tuttle person. "'A glass of native wine,' he says, 'may perhaps be taken now and then without harm.' "'Well,' I says, 'leave us have ales, wines, liquors, and cigars,' I says, but not him. I'd get a thimbleful of elderberry wine or something about every second Friday, except when I'd duck out the side door of a church and find some caffy. Here, George, foomer, foomer—bring us some seegars, and then stay on that spot—I may want you."

"Well, well!" said Cousin Egbert again, as if the meeting were still incredible.

"You old stinging-lizard!" responded the other