Among others was Maynard, smarting under his discomfiture.
“A brandy smash!” he demanded, pausing in front of the bar.
“Of all men, Dick Swinton!” soliloquised he while waiting for the mixture. “It’s true, then, that he’s been turned out of his regiment. No more than he deserved, and I expected. Confound the scamp! I wonder what’s brought him out here? Some card-sharping expedition, I suppose—a razzia on the pigeon-roosts of America! Apparently under the patronage of Girdwood mère, and evidently in pursuit of Girdwood fille. How has he got introduced to them? I’d bet high they don’t know much about him.”
“Brandy smash, mister?”
“Well!” he continued, as if tranquillised by a pull at the iced mixture and the narcotic smell of the mint. “It’s no business of mine; and after what’s passed, I don’t intend making it. They can have him at their own price. Caveat emptor. For this little contretemps I needn’t blame him, though I’d give twenty dollars to have an excuse for tweaking his nose!”
Captain Maynard was anything but a quarrelsome man. He only thought in this strain, smarting under his humiliation.
“It must have been the doing of the mother, who for a son-in-law prefers Mr Swinton to me. Ha! ha! ha! If she only knew him as I do?”
Another gulp out of the glass.
“But the girl was a consenting party. Clearly so; else why should she have hung fire about giving me an answer? Cut out by Dick Swinton! The devil?”
A third pull at the brandy smash.