Dennis found himself visibly enervated. At last he remembered that the week had advanced only as far as Thursday. Between that time and the Fabian Saturday a number of untoward events might occur.
A more seasoned applicant might present himself to the foreman upon whom Dennis depended, or, equally grievous, the present bibulous incumbent might be alarmed into mending his ways.
Hitherto Dennis had resisted the temptation to present himself to the attention of the foreman in advance of the date appointed.
In order, therefore, to master the anxiety which might betray him into some overt importunity, he decided to devote the day to a persistent canvass of the possibilities offered by the various wholesale houses.
Unknown to himself, Dennis had learned that the secret of patience was doing something else in the meantime.
However, the practical at last was triumphant, and Dennis, with a resolution that demanded prompt execution for its continued existence, adjusted the remaining chapter to his waistcoat in the early morning and descended to the lower floor.
On this occasion his solicitous friend behind the bar insisted upon detaining the young Irishman, who, urged by his solitary predicament and a degree depressed by the series of rebuffs which by now had developed a malicious habit, proceeded to the counter and, resting one foot upon the rail near the floor with a redeeming unfamiliarity, responded to the inquiry of the barman by admitting that he felt a “wee bit blue.”
This statement led to the revelation that the barman was similarly affected, and was engaged, at that moment, in the preparation of a famous antidote greatly in demand by sundry newsgatherers and night editors in Park Row.
Dennis watched him with interest and remarked that he set out two glasses, after the manner of those who are about to compound an effervescent.
Such, however, was not the case, and Dennis was startled presently to see the barman, after filling both glasses with a decoction which caught the light from a dozen merry angles, push one of them in his direction with the companionable suggestion: “Have one with me.”