Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/33

 "What did you say about a uniform and Uncle Sam, kid?" Dan inquired. "I ain't never seen no soldiers dressed like you over at the post."

The sailor explained, his bright face lighting up with a smile. Again Dan must shake hands with him, making a regular ceremony of it this time.

"Will you come in and have a drink?" he whispered, delicately covering the invitation from the ears of others, in case regulations of which he never had heard might deny the sailor the freedom of other men, as Indians belonging to Uncle Sam were denied. Dan's cautious reserve received a pleasant shock in the hearty and ready acceptance of his invitation. The sailor came up to the situation like a man of experience, Dan thought.

"You're a man clear down to the heels!" said Dan, with ingenuous sincerity, as they started for the door.

Dan was so well pleased with his guest that his generosity, never difficult to move, was at once extended to include all at Grimmitt's bar, in spite of the heavy drain his savings had suffered at the lawyer's hands but a few minutes before. As they lounged at the bar waiting for the bottle to come down the class, the sailor flashed a sidelong glance now and then at his companion's face, and smiled to himself in the way of a man who has heard tidings which bring cheer to his heart.

They put away a few charges of Grimmitt's worst, the sailor getting it down as if he had been drinking that kind of pain-killer a long time. Dan, a little flushed around the gills, spoke across to Grimmitt.