"Why, hello, Jim!" he called out. "Where you been hidin' yourself lately? Ain't seen you for a week o' Sundays. Come across and pass the time of day!"
Mr. Hackley, who had been debating whether or not he should pause for inspiration at the Ottoman, and had just virtuously declared for the negative, shambled over.
Ryan eyed him sympathetically. "You look kind o' played out, Jim. What you been doin' with yourself? Come in and take a drop of somethin' to hearten you up some. On the house."
"Well," said Mr. Hackley, unable to resist the novel fascination of liquoring gratis, "just a weeny mite for to cut the dust out o' my windpipe."
Ryan went behind the bar and served them himself, selecting with care a bottle which he described as the primest stuff in the house. From this he poured Hackley a remarkably stiff potation, slightly wetting the bottom of his own glass the while. The bottle he left standing ready on the bar.
"Here's how, friend Jim!"
Whatever Mr. Hackley's foibles, he was a man at his cups. His platform was the straight article uncontaminated by ice or flabby sparkling-water; and chasers and the like of those he left to schoolboys.
"Ain't took a drink for days," he said, holding up his glass to the electric light and squinting through it. "Cut it out religious, I have. Been settin' around the house, an' settin', under physic'an's orders, tryin' fer to get my health back so's I could go to moldin' agin. But Lordamussy, what's the use of torkin'! I ain't no more fitten fer work than a noo-born baby. Well, here's luck, Ryan!"
He set his glass down and involuntarily smacked his lips. The fiery liquid percolated through him down to his very toes. He felt better at once, more ambitious, less conscious of his constitution. And simultaneously, he lost something of that indolent good-nature which was the badge of all his sober hours.
Ryan regarded him with friendly anxiety. "You gotter be more careful with yourself, honest! Here—strengthen your holt a little. One little swallow ain't no help to a man as beat out as you are."