There had been a development. The girl was mechanically playing one of the compositions of that delicate weaver of subtle harmonies, Mr. John Philip Sousa; but she was not reading her music. Her eyelids were resolutely lowered, as if she wished to avoid seeing something. The reason resolved itself into a gentleman who was leaning over the front of the piano, gazing amorously down upon the musician, and endeavouring, with surprising success, to make himself heard above one of the composer's most characteristic efforts.
Hughie looked him up and down. He was a big man, powerfully built, with little pig's eyes set close together, and a ponderous and vicious-looking lower jaw. Was he her husband? wondered the deeply interested Hughie. No: he was too obviously endeavouring to make himself agreeable.
"Marrable, my son," suddenly interpolated the convivial but observant Allerton, "you're cut out! No use bidding against that customer. Do you know who he is?"
"No. Who?"
"That," replied the deck-hand with an air of almost proprietary pride, "is Noddy Kinahan."
"Oh! And who may he be?"
"Gee! (Sorry! One picks up these rotten Yankee expressions somehow.) I mean, I am surprised you haven't heard of him. He's rather a big man here. In fact, to be explish—explicit,"—Mr. Allerton was fast arriving at that stage of intoxication which cannot let well alone, but must tempt Providence by dragging in unnecessarily hard words,—"he is my employer."
"Anything else."
"Political boss of sorts. Inter alia—that's good! I'm glad I remembered that. Inter alia rhymes with Australia, doesn't it? We'll make up a Limerick on it some time—let me see, where was I? Oh, yesh—yes, I mean—inter alia, he owns the Orinoco and about a dozen more mouldy old coffins; and very well he does out of them, too! Buys them cheap, and—but excuse further details at present, ole man. To tell you the truth I'm getting so screwed that I'm afraid of saying something that in my calmer moments I shall subsequently regret. A cigar? I thank you. You're a white man, Marrable. Chin chin!"
After this burst of discretion Mr. Allerton returned to the joint worship of Bacchus and Vesta, the difficulty which he experienced in keeping the lighted end of the cigar out of his mouth increasing as the evening advanced, but leaving his cheerfulness unimpaired. His condition was due not so much to the depths of his potations as to the shallowness of his accommodation for the same; and strong-headed Hughie, as he surveyed the weak chin and receding forehead on the other side of the table, mused not altogether without envy upon the strange inequality of that law of nature which decrees that what is a toothful for one man shall be a skinful for another and an anæsthetic for a third.