"There you go, mixing the metaphor!" says Larry. "So I'm an ass, eh?"
"The word strikes me as beautifully descriptive," says Pinckney.
"Excuse me," says I, breakin' in, "but is this to a finish? If it is, I'll send out for some throat troches."
Larry grins and settles himself back easy in my desk chair. Great lad, this Mr. T. Lawrence Bolan! All he needs is a cape coat and a sugar-loaf hat with a silver buckle to be a stage Irishman. One of these tall, loose-hinged, awkward-gaited chaps, with wavy red hair the color of a new copper pan, also a chin dimple and a crooked mouth. By rights he should have been homely. Maybe he was too; but somehow, with that twisty smile of his workin', and them gray-blue eyes twinklin' at you, the word couldn't be said.
"Look at him, Shorty!" says Pinckney. "Six feet of futile clay; a waster of time, money, and opportunity."
"The three gifts that a fool tries to save and a wise man spends with a free hand," says Larry. "Give me a cigarette."
"How much, now, did you lose to that crowd of bridge sharks last night?" demands Pinckney, passin' over a gold case.
"Not my self-respect, anyway," says Larry. "Was I to pass cowardly with a hundred aces in hand? And I had the fun of making that Boomer-Day person quit bidding on eight hearts. How she did glare as she doubled me!"
"Set you six hundred, I hear," says Pinckney. "At a quarter the point that's no cheap fun."
"Who asks for cheap fun?" says Larry. "I paid the shot, didn't I?"