Mr. Werner did look at him, though with little apparent pleasure in the operation.
"Have what you want, then," he said. "Can't you get it there?" and he pointed to a place on the opposite side of the street where bottles were ranged conspicuously against the window-glass.
"There! My good Werner, of what are your thoughts made? The spirits there sold are so bad no water was never no worse."
"I should not have thought you a judge of the quality of any water except soda-water," answered Werner grimly.
"Ah!" was the reply; "but you are English. You have inherited nothing good, imaginative, poetic, from your father's fatherland."
"If by that you mean I have no knowledge of the quality of every tap in the metropolis, you are right, and, what is more, I do not want to have anything to do with poetry or imagination if either assumes that particular development."
"We put all those things on one side for an instant," suggested Kleinwort, making a sudden dive into a tavern which occupied a non-conspicuous position in an alley through which they were passing, leaving Werner standing on the pavement wet as a brook from the torrents of rain that were at last coming down as if a second deluge had commenced.
When Kleinwort reappeared, which he did almost immediately, his cheeks had resumed their natural hue, and the hand which grasped his umbrella was steady enough.
"If I drank as much as you," commented Mr. Werner, "I should go mad."