Belle was listening; these sparks were flying at her gate: "Whatever you do," she interjected contemptuously, "don't get a quarrel going over that room."
McAlpin, inextinguishable, turned to Belle: "Look at this: Henry Sawdy gets into that bathtub. He turns on the water. He goes to sleep. Every few weeks the ceiling falls on my new pool tables. First and last, I've had a ton of mortar on 'em. If there was any pressure, I'd be ruined."
"If there was any pressure," interposed Sawdy, "I wouldn't go to sleep. Do you know how long it takes to fill your blamed tub?"
McAlpin in violent protest, scratched the gravel with his hobnailed shoes: "I'll ask you: Am I responsible for the pressure, or the water company?" Sawdy undisturbed, continued to stroke his heavy mustache. "The water it takes to cover you, Henry," sputtered McAlpin, "would run a locomotive from here to Medicine Bend."
"I have to wait till everybody in town goes to bed before I can get a dew started on the faucet," averred Sawdy. "Sometimes I have to set up all night to take a bath. Look at the unreasonableness of it, Belle," he went on indignantly. "I'm paying this Shylock a dollar and a half a week for my room—and most of the time, no water."
McAlpin ground his teeth: "No water!" was all he could echo, doggedly.
"Do you know what this row is about, Belle?" demanded Sawdy. "He's trying to screw me up to a dollar seventy-five for the room. And everybody on the second floor using my bathtub," continued Sawdy, calmly.
"Your bathtub," gasped McAlpin. "Well, if you could get title to it by sleeping in it, it surely would be your tub, Sawdy."
"I don't want your blamed room any longer, anyway," declared Sawdy. "I'm going to get married."
McAlpin started: "Henry, don't make a blamed fool o' yoursel'."