“I tell you there’s nothing the matter with me!” cried Ralston, with some temper. “Why do you keep bothering me? I merely said I didn’t want to drink. Can’t a man not be thirsty? Confound it all, I’m not obliged to drink if I don’t want to!”
“Oh, well, don’t get into a fiery green rage about it, Jack. I’m thirsty myself, and I didn’t want to drink alone. Only, don’t go west of Maine so long as this lasts. They’re prohibition there, you know. Don’t try it, Jack; you’d come back on ice by the next train.”
“I’m going to stay here,” answered Ralston, without a smile. “Go ahead and get your drink.”
“All right! If you won’t, you won’t, I know. But when you’re scratching round and trying to get some sympathetic person, like Abraham and Lazarus, to give you a glass of water, think of what you’ve missed this afternoon!”
“Dives,” said Ralston, savagely, “is the only man ever mentioned in the Bible as having asked for a glass of water, and he’s—where he ought to be.”
“That’s an old, cold chestnut,” retorted Miner, turning to go, but not really in the least annoyed.
At that moment a servant crossed the room and stood before Ralston. Miner waited to see what would happen, half believing that Ralston was not in earnest, but had surreptitiously touched the electric bell on the table at his elbow, with the intention of ordering something.
“Mr. Lauderdale wishes to speak to you at the telephone, sir,” said the servant.
The man’s expression betrayed his respect for the name, and for a person who had a telephone in his house—an unusual thing in New York. It was the sort of expression which the waiters at restaurants put on when they present to the diner a dish of terrapin or a canvas-back duck, or open a very particularly old bottle of very particularly fine wine—quite different from the stolid look they wear for beef and table-claret.