“Who the devil is Lillian?” he said, turning a red face and bloodshot eyes upon me. “Hold up. Trickley is going to sing.”
“All right,” I said, pushing myself up from him; “just’s you say; I’ll tell you ‘bout it again.”
I saw Trickley indistinctly on the other side of the table and heard him sing something about
“The world is all an ocean and the people are the fish,
The devil is the fisherman and baits us as we wish;
When he wants to catch a boy he baits with sugar plums,
When he wants to catch a man he baits with golden sums,”
and closing my eyes to relieve them of the misty light I dozed in a half sleep with my head upon my breast till I was awakened by the applause at the conclusion of Trickley’s song.
“H’rah!” I shouted, a little louder than any one else, smashing my glass as I brought it down upon the table.
“Com mere, Jim,” I said, beckoning to the waiter who stood near me, “brush off these glass, and hold me up and sweep under me. D’you hear?”
Negro-like he was full of laughter at my condition, and snickered outright as he swept off the fragments of glass.
“Who’re you laughing at, you scoundrel? Umph?” I said, boiling over with rage, and seizing a goblet which Markham barely caught in time to save.
“I declare, sir, I wasn’t laughing at all, sir,” said Jim, frightened at my anger.