Brant grinned. “I had been aching to get a chance at you, and it came in my way last night—trying to make you come alive to your responsibilities, you know. Never gave anybody such a jolly good beating in all my life. Shall I come in and shake you into your raiment?”
“Oh, no, thank you; I’ll be down directly. Wait for me, if you are not in too much of a hurry. I’ll eat with you.”
Brant waited, and after breakfast they walked down town together. It was a tonic autumn morning, with a crisp clean wind blowing fresh from the snow-capped peaks, and a marvellous clarity in the atmosphere that seemed to bring the nearer foothills within easy speaking distance. On such a morning it was good to be alive, and Brant said something to that effect—an assertion to which Antrim gave conditional assent.
“Yes, if a fellow’s head could be as clear and bright as the morning and the atmosphere.”
“A fellow shouldn’t roil his brains with muddy fire water, then.”
“No; but I didn’t mean just that. That is only a consequence.”
“A very unnecessary consequence in your case. You know you haven’t a peg of an excuse to hang your villainy on, Harry.”
“I suppose I haven’t, when you get down to the marrow of the thing. A man never has a water-tight excuse for making several kinds of a donkey of himself. But I’d like to be allowed to say that it was the worst facer I have ever had. You see, I had been banking on a certain kind of happiness ever since Isabel and I used to go to school together; and then to have to give it up—well, it just knocked me out, that’s all.”
“But you are not going to stay knocked out, and you are not going to give it up—unless you are a donkey sober as well as a donkey drunk.”
“Oh, no; I’ve had my little fling, and I paid the piper’s bill last night. That settles the bottle imp. But as to the other, you don’t know Isabel.”