Mr. McGowan looked ill at ease and harassed—a condition opposed to his usual line of demeanour. He made a patent-medicine almanac into a roll and fitted it with unprofitable carefulness about his finger.
“I wouldn’t have this double handicap make a false start to-night for a million,” he said. “I’ve got a little flat up in Harlem all ready, with chrysanthemums on the table and a kettle ready to boil. And I’ve engaged a pulpit pounder to be ready at his house for us at 9.30. It’s got to come off. And if Rosy don’t change her mind again!”—Mr. McGowan ceased, a prey to his doubts.
“I don’t see then yet,” said Ikey, shortly, “what makes it that you talk of drugs, or what I can be doing about it.”
“Old man Riddle don’t like me a little bit,” went on the uneasy suitor, bent upon marshalling his arguments. “For a week he hasn’t let Rosy step outside the door with me. If it wasn’t for losin’ a boarder they’d have bounced me long ago. I’m makin’ $20 a week and she’ll never regret flyin’ the coop with Chunk McGowan.”
“You will excuse me, Chunk,” said Ikey. “I must make a prescription that is to be called for soon.”
“Say,” said McGowan, looking up suddenly, “say, Ikey, ain’t there a drug of some kind—some kind of powders that’ll make a girl like you better if you give ’em to her?”
Ikey’s lip beneath his nose curled with the scorn of superior enlightenment; but before he could answer, McGowan continued:
“Tim Lacy told me he got some once from a croaker uptown and fed ’em to his girl in soda water. From the very first dose he was ace-high and everybody else looked like thirty cents to her. They was married in less than two weeks.”
Strong and simple was Chunk McGowan. A better reader of men than Ikey was could have seen that his tough frame was strung upon fine wires. Like a good general who was about to invade the enemy’s territory he was seeking to guard every point against possible failure.
“I thought,” went on Chunk hopefully, “that if I had one of them powders to give Rosy when I see her at supper to-night it might brace her up and keep her from reneging on the proposition to skip. I guess she don’t need a mule team to drag her away, but women are better at coaching than they are at running bases. If the stuff’ll work just for a couple of hours it’ll do the trick.”