Both Pump and Dalroy thought they had never seen a man look so sullen. His face was of the rubicund sort that does not suggest jollity, but merely a stagnant indigestion in the head. His mustache hung heavy and dark, his brows yet heavier and darker. Dalroy had seen something of the sort on the faces of defeated people disgracefully forced into submission, but he could not make head or tail of it in connection with the priggish perfections of Peaceways. It was all the odder because he was manifestly prosperous; his clothes were smartly cut in something of the sporting manner, and the inside of his house was at least four times grander than the outside.
But what mystified them most was this, that he did not so much exhibit the natural curiosity of a gentleman whose private house is entered by strangers, but rather an embarrassed and restless expectation. During Dalroy’s eager apologies and courteous inquiries about the direction and accommodations of Peaceways, his eye (which was of the boiled gooseberry order) perpetually wandered from them to the cupboard and then again to the window, and at last he got up and went to look out into the road.
“Oh, yes, sir; very healthy place, Peaceways,” he said, peering through the lattice. “Very … dash it, what do they mean? … Very healthy place. Of course they have their little ways.”
“Only drink pure milk, don’t they?” asked Dalroy.
The householder looked at him with a rather wild eye and grunted.
“Yes; so they say,” and he went again to the window.
“I’ve bought some of it,” said Patrick, patting his pet milk can, which he carried under his arm, as if unable to be separated from Dr. Meadows’s discovery. “Have a glass of milk, sir.”
The man’s boiled eye began to bulge in anger–or some other emotion.
“What do you want?” he muttered, “are you ’tecs or what?”
“Agents and Distributors of the Meadows’s Mountain Milk,” said the Captain, with simple pride, “taste it?”