“You! Good joke. Haw! You’ve got as many lives as a cat, Bibby. Been blowing out your brains every season for fifteen years.” He struggled into his coat and squared himself before the mirror. “Wasting your time,” he finished dryly.
“Meaning that you are the chosen one? Oh, I say, Coley, don’t make me laugh. You’ll spoil the set of my cravat. You know, I couldn’t care for her if I thought her taste was as bad as that. Not engaged are you?”
“Oh, drop it,” said the other. “Remarks are personal. Miss Loring is fine girl. Fellow gets her will be lucky.” He had poured himself a drink, but paused in the act of taking it, and asked, “Haven’t seen Gallatin lately, have you?”
“No—nobody has—since that night at the Club. He’d been sitting tight—and God knows that’s no joke! Good Lord, but he did fall off with a thud! Been on the wagon six months, too. He ought to let it alone.”
“He can’t,” said Van Duyn grimly.
“Well, six months is a good while—for Phil—but he stuck it out like a little man.” And then ruminatively, “I wonder what made him begin again. He’d been refusing all the afternoon. Came in later with his jaw set—white and somber—you know—and started right in. It’s a great pity! I’d like to have a talk with Phil. I’m fond of that boy. But he’s so touchy. Great Scott! I tried it once, and I’ll never forget the look he gave me. Never again! I’d as leave try a curtain lecture on a Bengal tiger.”
“What’s the use? We’ve got troubles of our own.”
“Not like his, Coley. With me it’s a diversion, with you it’s an appetite, with Phil it’s a disease. That’s why he went to Canada this summer. By the way, you were in the woods with the Lorings, of course you heard about that girl that Phil met up there?”
“No,” growled the other.
“Seems to be a mystery. Percy Endicott says——”