Page:Meanwhile (1927).pdf/62

 "What celestial tea," she said.

Grover put down his cup. "In all my life put together," he blurted out, "I haven't drunk as much tea as I've guzzled in this room. What do women see in it?"

Sophie gasped. "Why, you poor child, you could have had whiskey. It never occurred to me."

Grover lit a cigarette in exasperation and got up to move about. It wasn't reassuring, at this juncture, to be taken so completely for a poor child. His only consolation was that John Scantleberry was so obnoxiously alcoholic. At this very moment he was doubtless absorbing rye in some country club near Chicago and negotiating for the purchase of more polo ponies. Sophie drew the line at Chicago. "Jack has things called interests there, but I haven't," she had once briefly explained.

"There's a bottle in that cabinet. Ring the bell if you want ice and a siphon."

Grover didn't want them at all; but he rang, imperiously. And when they came he poured himself a liberal measure of Scotch, in secret trepidation, and though he wasn't used to it, drank a good deal at one gulp, as if it were wine.

Sophie was gently punching a cushion, but instead of going to sit on the sofa he carried his glass and his gloom to the empty fireplace and leaned against the mantle, vaguely recalling a moving picture he had once seen. Already the whiskey was blurring the edge of