“Fun!” Joe cried. “I don’t want to drink!”
And at that his stocky companion burst into outright laughter. “I know you think so, Joe,” he said apologetically, when his hilarity was sufficiently diminished. “Of course you believe it. I’m not denying that.”
“By George!” the unfortunate young man explained. “You do make me sick! I suppose if I had smallpox you’d say you weren’t denying I believed I had it! You sit there and drink your buttermilk, and laugh at me like a ninny because you can’t understand! No man on earth can understand, unless he has the thirst come on him the way mine does on me! And yet you tell me I only ‘believe’ I have it!”
“Yes, I ought to explain,” said Mr. Allen soothingly. “It did sound unfeeling. One of the reasons you drink, Joe, is because this is a small town;—you have an active mind, a lot of the time there’s nothing much to do, and you get bored.”
“I told you nobody could understand such a thirst as mine—nobody except the man that’s got one like it!”
“This hankering is something inside you, isn’t it, Joe?”
“What of that?”
“It comes on you about every so often?”
“Yes.”
“If there weren’t any liquor in the world, you’d have the thirst for it just the same, would you?”