“Have a drink, old chap?”
Major Flint flew to his feet.
“Well, thank ye, thank ye,” he said. “Now where’s that soda water you offered me just now?” he shouted to the steward.
The speed and completeness of the reconciliation was in no way remarkable, for when two men quarrel whenever they meet, it follows that they make it up again with corresponding frequency, else there could be no fresh quarrels at all. This one had been a shade more acute than most, and the drop into amity again was a shade more precipitous.
Major Flint in his eagerness had put most of his moustache into the life-giving tumbler, and dried it on his handkerchief.
“After all, it was a most amusing incident,” he said. “There was I with my back turned, waiting for you to give it up, when your bl—wretched little ball hit my foot. I must remember that. I’ll serve you with the same spoon some day, at least I would if I thought it sportsmanlike. Well, well, enough said. Astonishing good whisky, that of yours.”
Captain Puffin helped himself to rather more than half of what now remained in the flask.
“Help yourself, Major,” he said.
“Well, thank ye, I don’t mind if I do,” he said, reversing the flask over the tumbler. “There’s a good tramp in front of us now that the last tram has gone. Tram and tramp! Upon my word, I’ve half a mind to telephone for a taxi.”
This, of course, was a direct hint. Puffin ought clearly to pay for a taxi, having won two half-crowns to-day. This casual drink did not constitute the usual drink stood by the winner, and paid for with cash over the counter. A drink (or two) from a flask was not the same thing… Puffin naturally saw it in another light. He had paid for the whisky which Major Flint had drunk (or owed for it) in his wine-merchant’s bill. That was money just as much as a florin pushed across the counter. But he was so excessively pleased with himself over the adroitness with which he had claimed the last hole, that he quite overstepped the bounds of his habitual parsimony.