Her voice lifted in alarm. "Nay, nay, Clarence—not for me!" she urged hastily.
"But it's only—"
"No fizzy adulterations in mine—not on your life." She followed me across the room. "Just give me the straight, pure goods—anything, just so it's whisky."
And before I could say a word—if, indeed, I could have said a word—she had selected a decanter of Scotch, and with cigar tilted upward in her tender mouth, was absorbingly pouring a shining stream of the amber fluid.
To see the slow curving of that delicately molded wrist, the challenging flash of the saucy eyes of blue, by Jove, it made me just forget all about what she was doing till the fluid ran over the brim. And then, before I could intercept her, she had lightly gestured her glass to mine, and in a flash the stuff was gone.
Gone! A full whisky glass; and I recalled with a shiver of horror that it was very high proof liquor—something I seldom touched myself, but kept on hand for certain of my friends.
"I say, you know!" I gasped in consternation.
"I'm awfully afraid that will—er—will—" I gulped wordlessly.
The coral lips curved scornfully.
"Get me jingled?" She looked as she might have if I had insulted her. "Maybe so in those girlie-girlie days you were trying to josh me about, but not since these two years I've been at college." She shook her lovely, bright head, and following a long enjoyable pull at the cigar, projected five perfect rings at a frescoed cherub in the ceiling. The exquisite eyes softened dreamily as under the spell of some pleasing thought—some tender reminiscence.