“Absolutely!”
“Well, well!” said Mr. Connolly, noncommittally.
Archie, pleased with the smoothness with which matters had opened, bent forward winsomely.
“I say, you know! It won’t do, you know! Absolutely no! Not a bit like it! No, no, far from it! Well, how about it? How do we go? What? Yes? No?”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“Call it off, old thing!”
“Call what off?”
“This festive old strike.”
“Not on your—hallo, Dan! Back again?”
Mr. Brewster, looming over the table like a thundercloud, regarded Archie with more than his customary hostility. Life was no pleasant thing for the proprietor of the Cosmopolis just now. Once a man starts building hotels, the thing becomes like dram-drinking. Any hitch, any sudden cutting-off of the daily dose, has the worst effects; and the strike which was holding up the construction of his latest effort had plunged Mr. Brewster into a restless gloom. In addition to having this strike on his hands, he had had to abandon his annual fishing-trip just when he had begun to enjoy it; and, as if all this were not enough, here was his son-in-law sitting at his table. Mr. Brewster had a feeling that this was more than man was meant to bear.