"Ah, Westerners!" exclaimed the old lady. "I come from the West myself. My family goes back there every year."
"Yes," chimed in the girls, "we just love San Diego!"
"In what section of the town did you live?" asked the gentleman, and my friend whom I was inwardly cursing, seeing my perplexity, quickly put in for me:
"Oh, you would never know it, sir," and then lowering his voice in a confidential way, he added, "he kept a barroom in the Mexican part of the town."
"A barroom!" exclaimed the old lady. "Fancy that!" She looked at me with great, innocent interest.
"Yes," continued this lost soul, "my father, who is a State senator, sent him to boarding school and tried to do everything for him, but he drifted back into the old life just as soon as he could. It gets a hold on them, you know."
"Yes, I know," said the old lady, sadly, "my cook had a son that went the same way."
"He isn't really vicious, though," added my false friend with feigned loyalty—"merely reckless."
"Well, my poor boy," put in the old gentleman with cheery consideration, "I am sure you must find that navy life does you a world of good—regular hours, temperate living and all that."
"Right you are, sport," says I bitterly, assuming my enforced role, "I haven't slit a Greaser's throat since I enlisted."