“Can’t you get some one in his place?”
“Yes, but I’d likely be robbed; I had a bartender once who robbed me of two or three dollars a day.”
“But you trusted the boy?”
“Yes, Dodger wouldn’t steal—I can say that much for him.”
“There’s one thing I noticed about the boy,” said the colonel, reflectively. “He wouldn’t drink. More than once I have asked him to drink with me, but he would always say, ‘Thank you, colonel, but I don’t like whiskey.’ I never asked him to take anything else, for whiskey’s the only drink fit for a gentleman. Do you expect to get the boy back?”
“If I could only get out for a day I’d hunt him up; but I’m tied down here.”
“I seed him yesterday, Tim,” said a red-nosed man who had just entered the saloon, in company with a friend of the same general appearance. Both wore silk hats, dented and soiled with stains of dirt, coats long since superannuated, and wore the general look of barroom loafers.
They seldom had any money, but lay in wait for any liberal stranger, in the hope of securing a free drink.
“Where did you see him, Hooker?” asked Tim Bolton, with sudden interest.
“Selling papers down by the Astor House.”