“You have a nice, clean place to sleep?”
“A man could ask for nothing better, ma’am.”
If anything it was too clean and nice.
“Then what in the world is the matter with you?” she exclaimed, the mystery deepening.
John cleared his throat. This was a difficult matter to express. There have been plenty of better men in a like position—men with well-defined notions of what they wished to say but when the time came with no words to say them.
“Perhaps,” he suggested, “if I says I hasn’t slept for three nights that will be enough.”
“Then all you need is a tonic,” she affirmed, brightening. “I’ll get the bottle—”
She had half risen when he checked her. He remembered with decided unpleasantness the taste of that dark liquid which she kept for the occasional indispositions of her staff.
“No’m. It isn’t anything that medicine can fairly reach, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.”
“Then if it isn’t your blood, it’s your nerves,” she declared.