Undiscouraged, the newcomer took off his mackintosh, offered a jest about the weather, beamed cordially upon the crowd, and playfully cuffed the ears of the boy who demanded, "No d-r-r-rink, no d-r-r-rink for me."
"All right," he said, "if you don't want any drink, you needn't cry about it. I'll take your share when the whisky comes."
Again he glanced round with an inviting smile, but the petrified images looked remote, unfriendly, melancholy, slow.
But this chilliness troubled him no more than a frosty morning troubles the jovial sun. He beamed and glowed and laughed and talked, and, despite themselves, the genteel glaciers thawed.
"That man," I said to myself, "comes from the North."
His next speech told of storms he had seen—at Blackpool! of seas washing over the promenade wetting him "three streets back."
One of the gentlemen from London cast a look of curiosity.
The man from the North went on to tell how he had taken a day's sail from Blackpool, and, being unable to land there at night, had been carried to Fleetwood, and thence back by rail after midnight.
"How was that?" asked the gentleman who had looked interested; "haven't they a pier at Blackpool?"