Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/194

 The Patridge Hunter began instantly to beat muffled time with his soft felt slippers. Alrik plunged as usual into a fearfully clever and clattery imitation of an ox shying at a street-car. ''But what of it? No wakened, sparkling-eyed girl came stealing forth from her corner to cuddle her blazing cheek against the cool, brass-colored jowl of the phonograph horn.'' An All-Goneness is an amazing thing. It was strange about Alrik's Wife. Her presence had been as negative as a dead gray dove. But her absence was like scarlet strung with bells!

The evening began to drag out like a tortured rubber band getting ready to snap.

It was surely eleven o clock before the Pretty Lady returned from the kitchen with our hot lemonades. The tall glasses jingled together pleas antly on the tray. The height was there, the breadth, the precious, steaming fragrance. But the Blue Serge Man had always mixed our night-caps for us.

With grandiloquent pleasantry, the Partridge Hunter jumped to his feet, raised his glass, toasted "Happy Days," choked on the first swallow, bungled his grasp, and dropped the whole glass in shattering, messy fragments to the floor.

"Lord," he muttered under his breath, "one could stand missing a fellow in a church or a graveyard or a mournful sunset glow—but to miss him