"And sporting bachelor rooms of your own!"
"I'm of age. Besides, if you must know, mother and Mae Alys are both dotty on the society game, and I'm not. I won't be rushed round to pink teas and—and all that sort of thing."
"Far more wholesome than pink whiskeys at Dutch House."
"You don't understand—"
"No; but I mean to. There!" announced P. Sybarite, finishing the bandage with a tidy flat knot—make yourself comfortable on that couch, tell me where you keep your whiskey, and I'll mix myself a drink and listen to your degrading confession....
"Now," he added, when Peter Kenny, stretched out on the couch, had suffered himself to be covered up—"not being an M.D., I've no conscience at all about letting you talk yourself to death; eaten alive as I am with curiosity; and knowing besides that you can't kill a Kenny but with kindness."
"You'll find the whiskey on the buffet," said the boy.
"Obliged to you," P. Sybarite replied, finding it.
"And I suppose I—"
"You're quite right; you've had enough. Alcohol is nothing to help mend a wound. If your friend Higgins permits it, when he comes—well and good.... Meanwhile," he added, taking a seat near the head of the couch, and fixing his youthful relation with a stern enquiring eye—"what were you doing in Dutch House the night?"