“Pretty, aren’t they?” he asked sententiously of no one in particular, “pretty, innocent, winking bubbles! Little hopes rising and bursting.”
“Hope deferred maketh the heart sick,” put in the thirsty Percy promptly. “Luck, Colonel!” and drank.
With a long sigh the Colonel lifted his glass. “Why do we do it?” he asked again. “There’s nothing—positively nothing in it.”
“You never said a truer thing,” laughed Ogden Spencer, for the Colonel had set his empty glass upon the table.
“Oh, for the days of sunburnt mirth—of youth and the joyful Hippocrene!” the Colonel sighed again.
“Write—note—Chairman—House Committee,” said Coleman Van Duyn, arousing from slumber, thickly, “mighty poor stuff here lately.”
“Go back to sleep, Coley,” laughed Spencer. “It’s not your cue.”
Van Duyn lurched heavily forward for his glass, and drank silently. “Hippocrene?” he asked. “What’s Hippocrene?”
“Nectar, my boy,” said the Colonel pityingly, “the water of the gods.”