Where the great public-house lamp shone brightly through the landing window the stairs branched, one flight descending to the side door by which we had entered and the other leading to the back bar of the public-house. It was as we reached this bifurcation that I found I had guessed rightly.
"I say," he said, "I'm beastly cold! Come this way and have a drink!"
I shook my head.
"Not here," I said. "Not on my own premises, so to speak. If you don't mind my having something thin I'll come over the way with you."
"Anywhere," he said, with another shiver.
There was another public-house just beyond the Sarcey's Fluid advertisement. We crossed and entered it.
"Rum—hot!" he called familiarly, peering under the frame of pivoted glass panes and flipping on the counter with a florin to attract the barmaid's attention. "Come along, Flossie—hurry up!... What's your poison, Jeff?"
He had his rum hot; but I drank nothing stronger than peppermint.
VII
His incredible gaucheries apart, I had no reason for hating him. One does not hate a youngster seven years one's junior merely because he is a mass of inexperience and self-sufficiency. Once again my hate was really a hatred of the whole dreary circumstances of my life, and, when I saw this concentrating stormily over young Merridew's head, I made attempt after attempt to divert it. I swear to you I made these attempts. I made them first of all to save him from a contest so unequal as one with my wrath must be; and if I made them later so that I myself should not be merely the slave of that wrath, I still made them. And all the time, as I say, so long as he did not stand in my way, it was a matter of indifference to me whether he took the upward path or that which led downhill to perdition.