“Uh-huh!” replied Mr. Priestley, with a brave attempt at a smile, and raised his tumbler. Mr. Priestley, as we have already seen, had a Palate. Elderberry-wine does not harmonise with a Palate. Life seemed very bleak at that moment to Mr. Priestley.
He swallowed three large gulps like the gentleman he was, then set his half-empty tumbler down. At precisely the same moment, with an astringent face, Laura was setting her tumbler down. Instantly the landlady pounced on them and re-filled them to the brim.
“That’ll put you as right as rain,” she announced.
Mr. Priestley looked at her with deepened gloom. “It was very nice,” he lied manfully. “Very nice indeed. But I think I won’t have any more, really.”
“And catch your deathacold, sir, instead?” retorted the landlady. “No, you drink that up, and you won’t have to worry about colds.”
“I don’t think I will, really,” Mr. Priestley wriggled. “I’ll be getting along now and——”
“If I were you, mum,” the landlady informed Laura, “I should make him. Mark my words, you’ll have him on your hands with the influenza if you don’t.”
“I think you’re quite right,” Laura agreed, a malicious twinkle in her eye. “Drink it up at once, darling!”
Mr. Priestley gazed at her with mute appeal.
“If I were you, mum,” the landlady added, “I wouldn’t let him go down to change ’is clothes till he had drunk it.”