"True! And I've quit drinking."
Now Cady was blase, but he had a heart; his sympathies were slow, but he was not insensible to misfortune. Accordingly he responded with a cry of pity, running his eye over his friend to estimate the ravages of Temperance. Midway in its course his gaze halted, he passed a silk-gloved palm lightly across his brow, and looked again. A tiny head seemed to protrude from Bob's pocket, a pair of bright, inquiring eyes seemed to be peering directly at the observer.
"I—guess I'd better quit, too," said Cady, faintly. "Are you—alone?" Bob gently extracted Ying from his resting-place, and the two men studied him gravely.
"Little beggar, isn't he?" Cady remarked. "Has he got a brother? I'd like to give one to—you know!"
"He's alone in the world. I'm his nearest of kin."
"Give you five dollars for him," Cady offered.
"I just paid five hundred, and he's worth a thousand. Why, his people came over ahead of the Mayflower."
The gloomy lover was interested; in his face there gleamed a faint desire. "Think of it! Well, make it a thousand. I'll send him in a bunch of orchids. Haw!" He doubled over his stick, convulsed with appreciation of his own originality. But again Bob refused. "Don't be nasty, I'll make it fifteen hundred."
Bob carefully replaced the canine atom and grinned at his friend.
"I need the money, but—nothing doing."