And, indeed, the room with its mammoth sideboard black with age and its solitary chair at one end of the long table, was lonely enough. On the walls, papered a generation ago with a drab paper sprinkled over with occasional pale gilt medallions, were some time-stained engravings: "The Destruction of Nineveh"; "The Trial of Effie Deans"; "The Death-bed of Washington." A gloomy room at best; now, with the shutters of one window still bowed, and the faint twitter of the canaries, and that one chair at the head of the table, it was very melancholy.
"Sit down!" said Benjamin Wright. Still in his moth-eaten high hat, he shuffled about to fetch from the sideboard a fat decanter with a silver chain and label around its neck, and two tumblers.
"No," said Dr. Lavendar; "I'm obliged to you."
"What, temperance?" snarled the other.
"Well, I hope so," Dr. Lavendar said, "but not a teetotaler, if that's what you mean. Only I don't happen to want any whiskey at five o'clock in the afternoon."
At which his host swore softly, and lifting the decanter poured out two good fingers.
"Mr. Wright," said Dr. Lavendar, "I will be obliged if you will not swear in my presence."
"You needn't talk to me," cried Benjamin Wright, "I despise this damned profanity there is about; besides, I am always scrupulously particular in my language before females and parsons. Well;—I wanted to see you, because that jack-donkey, Sam, my grandson, is causing me some anxiety."
"Why, Sam is a good boy," Dr. Lavendar protested.
"Too good. I like a boy to be human at twenty-three. He doesn't know the wickedness of the world."