This much Mr. Wrenn saw. Then he set himself to the hard task of listening to Charley, who was muttering:
“Back quick, ain’t you, ol’ Wrenn? You come up to see me, didn’t you? You’re m’ friend, ain’t you, eh? I got an awful hang-over, ain’t I? You don’t care, do you, ol’ Wrenn?”
Mr. Wrenn stared at him weakly, but only for a minute. Perhaps it was his cattle-boat experience which now made him deal directly with such drunkenness as would have nauseated him three months before; perhaps his attendance on a weary Istra.
“Come now, Charley, you got to buck up,” he crooned.
“All ri’.”
“What’s the trouble? How did you get going like this?”
“Wife left me. I was drinking. You think I’m drunk, don’t you? But I ain’t. She went off with her sister—always hated me. She took my money out of savings-bank—three hundred; all money I had ’cept fifty dollars. I’ll fix her. I’ll kill her. Took to hitting the booze. Goglefogle fired me. Don’t care. Drink all I want. Keep young fellows from getting it! Say, go down and get me pint. Just finished up pint. Got to have one-die of thirst. Bourbon. Get—”
“I’ll go and get you a drink, Charley—just one drink, savvy?—if you’ll promise to get cleaned up, like I tell you, afterward.”
“All ri’.”
Mr. Wrenn hastened out with a whisky-flask, muttering, feverishly, “Gee! I got to save him.” Returning, he poured out one drink, as though it were medicine for a refractory patient, and said, soothingly: