“I don’t want no——” began Sam roughly, driven beside himself by the old enemy.
“Will you wait ten minutes for me?” asked Andy. “I won’t ask you to do more than that. I am going out.”
“I don’t——” began Sam again.
“It’s all right, Sam,” said Andy.
There was a moment’s silence while the two men looked at each other, then Sam drew a long breath and said—
“Very well, I’ll wait.”
A moment after the time stated Andy rushed in breathless with two bottles under his arm, and almost upset the little maid, who was carrying the tea-tray.
“A tumbler, please,” he said, sitting down to the table. “Here, Sam, you have that chair.”
Sam sat gingerly on the edge of it, feeling suspicious that he was being ‘had,’ and yet scarcely thinking it of Parson Andy—but parsons were all alike, evidently, when you got deep enough down.
The door closed on the little maid again, the tumbler stood clean and shining on the table. Sam’s throat became dry as he stared morosely at it. Then there was a click, as of a beer-bottle being opened, the golden fluid ran ‘clop-clop-clop’ into the glass.