It never makes me sick,—I smoke at all times, sick or well, night or day, in or out, working or idle.”
“You carry it farther than I do,” said I, “or, I rather think, than any body I ever knew. I cannot touch the pipe when I’m unwell.”
“I never found myself in that way yet,” replied he. “I believe if death could take a cutty within those grinning teeth of his, I would smoke a pipe with him.”
“But it must cost you much money,” said I, as I glanced at his seedy coat and squabashed hat.
“Oh, I can keep it off the price of my dinner,” was the reply.
“But does it not dry your throat and make you yearn for ale?”
“Never a bit; though water, I admit, is a bad smoking drink. I take the ale when I can get it, and if you’ll stand a pot, this minute I’m ready. If I can’t get it, I stick to the tobacco.”
“And if you can’t get the tobacco,” said I, with more meaning perhaps than he wotted, “what do you do?”
“That never happened yet,” replied he, with a chuckle, “and it never will.”
“You wouldn’t steal it, would you?”—a question much in my way.