The editor smiled. “The beads on the outside of the glass won’t cool you off half as much as the beads on the outside of your head,” he said. “Did you ever stop to think of that?”
“Sweat, you mean?”
“Exactly. You know, when troops go into a hot country, they get flannel-covered canteens; and when they want to cool off the water in the canteens, they wet the flannel and let it dry. The evaporation of your own perspiration is the finest cooling agency in the world.”
“May be,” Wint agreed. “But it doesn’t stop your thirst.”
B. B. said good-naturedly: “A thirst is one of the handicaps of the smoker. I quit smoking a good many years ago. A non-smoker can satisfy his own thirst by swallowing his own spittle. I don’t suppose you ever thought of that?”
“Is that straight?”
“Yes, indeed.”
Wint asked amiably: “Mean to say you wouldn’t have to take a barrel of water to cross the Sahara.”
“Oh, when the bodily juices are exhausted, of course....”
Wint grinned. “I’ll stick to my beer.”