“You don’t mean that dreadful quack medicine he’s selling on the street, do you?” she protested.
“Why not? I don’t know that it’s worthless, and I do know that Quagg has sold it on street corners for twenty years from coast to coast. He goes back to the same towns over and over, and people buy who always bought before. Looks like a good thing to me. Quagg was a regular doctor when he was a kid; had a real diploma and all that, but no practice and no patience. Joke. Giggle.”
The oysters came on now, and they talked of other things, but while they were upon the meat Doctor Lazzier, having finished, came across to shake hands with his friend of a day, and was graciously charmed to meet Mrs. Wallingford.
“Sit down,” invited J. Rufus. “Won’t you try a glass of this? It’s very fair,” and he raised a practised eyebrow to the waiter.
The doctor delicately pushed down the edge of the ice-wet napkin until he could see the label, and he gave an involuntary smile of satisfaction as he recognized the vintage. The head waiter had timed the exact second to take that bottle out of the ice-pail, had wrapped the wet napkin about it and almost reverently filled glasses. Occasionally he came over and felt up inside the hollow on the bottom of the bottle.
“Delighted,” confessed the doctor, and sat down quite comfortably.
“You may smoke if you like, Doctor,” offered Mrs. Wallingford, smiling. “I don’t seem to feel that a man is comfortable unless he is smoking.”
“To tell the truth, he isn’t,” agreed the doctor with a laugh, and accepting a choice cigar from Wallingford he lit it.
The waiter came with an extra glass and filled for all three of them.