He laughed boisterously, as Sommers shook hands and sat down.
"Women know they've got you while you are sick. They like to keep an eye on a man, eh?"
He laughed again, confidentially, as if the doctor, being a man, would appreciate the point. Then he continued, nervously, without pause:
"But I have some business to attend to. I must get out of this as soon as you can patch me up so I can walk straight. I ought to have been in Denver a month ago. There's a man out there, who comes in from his ranch two hundred miles to see me. He is a fine fellow, strapping, big six-footer. He knows how to put in his time day and night, when he gets to town. I remember one time we were in Frisco together—ever been in Frisco? It's a great place for a good dinner, and all you want to drink. Drink—my! I've seen the time—"
He rambled on, now and then pausing to laugh boisterously at some recollection. As his whirligig tale touched upon indecent episodes, his voice lowered and he sought for convenient euphemisms, helped out by sympathetic nods. Mrs. Preston made several attempts to interrupt his aimless, wandering talk; but he started again each time, excited by the presence of the doctor. His mind was like a bag of loosely associated ideas. Any jar seemed to set loose a long line of reminiscences, very vaguely connected. The doctor encouraged him to talk, to develop himself, to reveal the story of his roadside debaucheries. He listened attentively, evincing an interest in the incoherent tale. Mrs. Preston watched the doctor's face with restless eyes.
Finally Preston ended his husky monotone in a querulous entreaty. "I need a little whiskey to keep me going. Tell her, won't you?—to let me have a little drink. My regular allowance was a pint a day, and I haven't had a drop for four weeks. Your Chicago whiskey is rotten bad, though, I tell you. I just stepped into a place to get a drink with Joe Campbell—his father owns a big pulp mill in Michigan—well—we had one or two drinks, and the first thing I knew there was shooting all over the place, and some one grabbed me, and I was thrown into the street—"
Mrs. Preston exclaimed, "Do you want to hear more?"
Sommers rose. "I'll come again to see you, Mr. Preston, and I will leave something that will help you. Good night."
"It was good of you to take this interest, doctor. I am glad to have met you, Doctor—?"
"Sommers," suggested the doctor, smiling at the evidences of forgotten breeding that cropped out of the general decay.