“I want a clear, cool, sparkling drink that has a tang of acid in it. Where's the cherry phosphate? That, not at all sweet, would be good; don't you think?”
The attendant did think. He pointed out the different taps, and the Angel compounded the drink, while Freckles, standing so erect he almost leaned backward, gazed at her and paid no attention to anyone else. When she had the glass brimming, she tilted a little of its contents into a second glass and tasted it.
“That's entirely too sweet for a thirsty man,” she said.
She poured out half the mixture, and refilling the glass, tasted it a second time. She submitted that result to the attendant. “Isn't that about the thing?” she asked.
He replied enthusiastically. “I'd get my wages raised ten a month if I could learn that trick.”
The Angel carried the brimming, frosty glass to Freckles. He removed his hat, and lifting the icy liquid even with her eyes and looking straight into them, he said in the mellowest of all the mellow tones of his voice: “I'll be drinking it to the Swamp Angel.”
As he had said to her that first day, she now cautioned him: “Be drinking slowly.”
When the screen-door swung behind them, one of the men at the counter asked of the attendant: “Now, what did that mean?”
“Exactly what you saw,” replied he, rather curtly. “We're accustomed to it here. Hardly a day passes, this hot weather, but she's picking up some poor, god-forsaken mortal and bringing him in. Then she comes behind the counter herself and fixes up a drink to suit the occasion. She's all sorts of fancies about what's what for all kinds of times and conditions, and you bet she can just hit the spot! Ain't a clerk here can put up a drink to touch her. She's a sort of knack at it. Every once in a while, when the Boss sees her, he calls out to her to mix him a drink.”
“And does she?” asked the man with an interested grin.