"Where's everybody?" he asked of her.
"Oh, things will liven up after a bit," she yawned.
Tidbury sat at a small bright blue table and scanned a card affixed to the wall.
Angel's Ambrosia ........ $0.50
Horse's Neck .............. .60
Devil's Delight .............. .70
Dry Martini .................. .50
Very dry Martini .......... .60
Very, very dry Martini .. .90
Champagne Sizzle ........ .75
A sleepy waiter with a soup-stained vest came from the inner room presently.
"Gimme a Devil's Delight," ordered Tidbury Epps recklessly.
He had heard that Greenwich Village, the untrammeled, laughs openly in the teeth of the Eighteenth Amendment. He had never in his life tasted an alcoholic drink, but to-night he was stopping at nothing. The Devil's Delight came, and Tidbury as he sipped its pink saccharinity found himself feeling that the devil is rather easily delighted. He had expected the potion to make his head buzz; but it did not. Instead it distinctly suggested rather weak and not very superior strawberry sirup and carbonated water. He crooked a summoning finger at the waiter.
"Horse's Neck," he commanded.
The Horse's Neck made its appearance, an insipid-looking amber fluid with a wan piece of lemon peel floating shamefacedly on its surface.
"Tastes just like ginger ale to me," remarked Mr. Epps. "Wadjuh expeck in a Horse's Neck?" queried the waiter bellicosely. "Chloride of lime?"