“Poor!” exclaimed Ralston, contemptuously. “I’m poor.”
“I wish I were, then—in your way,” returned Miner. “That was Irroy Brut, I noticed. It looked awfully good. It’s true that you haven’t two daughters, as your cousin Sandy has.”
“Nor a millionaire son-in-law—like Ben Slayback,—Slayback of Nevada he is, in the Congressional Record, because there’s another from somewhere else.”
“He wears a green tie,” said Miner, softly. “I saw him two years ago, before he and Charlotte were married.”
“I know,” answered Ralston. “Cousin Katharine hates him, I believe. Uncle Robert will probably leave the whole fortune in trust for Slayback’s children. There’s a little boy. They say he has red hair, like his father, and they have christened him Alexander—merely as an expression of hope. It would be just like uncle Robert.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Bright. “But as for Slayback, don’t abuse him till you know him better. I knew him out West, years ago. He’s a brick.”
“He is precisely the colour of one,” retorted Ralston.
“Don’t be spiteful, Jack.”
“I’m not spiteful. I daresay he’s full of virtue, as all horrid people are—inside. The outside of him is one of nature’s finest failures, and his manners are awful always—and worse when he tries to polish them for the evening. He’s a corker, a thing to scare sharks with—it doesn’t follow that he’s been a train-wrecker or a defaulting cashier, and I didn’t say it did. Oh, yes—I know—handsome is that puts its hand into its pocket, and that sort of thing. Give me some soda water with a proverb in it—that confounded Irroy wasn’t dry enough.”
Frank Miner looked up into Bright’s eyes and smiled surreptitiously. He was walking between his two taller companions. Bright glanced at Ralston’s lean, nervous face, and saw that the lines of ill-temper had deepened during the last quarter of an hour. It was not probable that a pint of wine could alone have any perceptible effect on the man’s head, but it was impossible to know what potations had preceded the draught.