He stood up, carefully flicking some cigar ashes off the trailing ends of his four-in-hand tie, and glanced at a watch.
“Well, it's nearly six o'clock. Time flies when a fellow is in good company, don't it? We'll be in Louisville in less than an hour, won't we?—if we're on time. I've got to quit you there; I'm going on to Cincy to-night. Tell you what—let's slip into the diner and have a bite and a little nip of something together first—I want to see as much of you as I can. You take a little drink once in a while, don't you?”
“I drink a glass of light beer occasionally,” admitted Emanuel.
Probably in his whole life he had consumed as much as five commercial quarts of that liquid, half a pint at a time.
“Fine business!” said Caruthers. “Beer happens to be my regular stand-by too. Come on, then.” And he led the way forward for the transported Emanuel.
They said at the bank and at the boarding house that Moon looked better for his week's lay-off, none of them knowing, of course, what had come into the little man's dun-coloured life.
On the twenty-eighth of the month he was so abstracted that Mr. Blair, desiring his presence for the moment in the president's office, had to call him twice, a thing which so annoyed Mr. Blair that the second time he fairly shouted Emanuel's name; and when Emanuel came hurrying into his presence inquired somewhat acidly whether Emanuel was suffering from any auricular affection. On the morning of the twenty-ninth Emanuel was in quite a little fever of anticipation. The morning passed; the noon or dinner hour arrived and passed.
It was one-thirty. The street drowsed in the early autumnal sunshine, and in front of his bookstore, in a tilted-back chair, old Mr. Wilcox for a spell slumbered audibly. There is a kind of dog—not so numerous since automobiles have come into such general and fatal use—that sought always the middle of the road as a suitable spot to take a nap in, arousing with a yelp when wheels or hoofs seemed directly over him and, having escaped annihilation by an eighth of an inch, moving over perhaps ten feet and lying down again in the perilous pathway of traffic. One of this breed slept now, undisturbed except by flies, at the corner of Front and Franklin. For the time being he was absolutely safe. Emanuel had been to his dinner and had returned. He was beginning to worry. About two-thirty, just after the cashier had taken his tennis racket and gone for the day, Emanuel answered a ring at the telephone.
Over the wire there came to him the well-remembered sound of the blithe Carutherian voice:
“That you, old man?” spake Mr. Caruthers jovially. “Well, I'm here, according to promise. Just got in from down the road.”