"I think I'll have a bottle of Bass," I said, addressing myself to the landlord. "That's the best drink for this time of day."
The little man in black blew his nose, making a surprising amount of noise over the operation.
"I envy you, sir," he remarked. "There's nothing I like better than a glass of beer meself, but it goes straight to my liver. Perhaps you aren't troubled in that way."
"I don't know where it goes to," I said, "but the result seems to be quite satisfactory."
The landlord unscrewed a bottle and carefully tilted its contents into a tumbler.
"You don't take enough exercise, Mr. Watson," he remarked. "No one can drink beer, not if they sit in an office all day. You want to be out in the open air, like George here."
The old boatman nodded affirmatively. "Beer never 'urt me," he observed with a chuckle. "I reckon I drunk enough of it in my time to float a Thames barge."
With a regretful shake of his head the little man applied himself to his whisky. "You couldn't do it, not if you were in the house agent line," he remarked. "It would have to be spirits or nothing then, the same as it is with me."
I paid for my drink, and, strolling across the room, sat down at an empty table in one of the bay-windows. There was a paper lying in front of me—a weekly rag called the Shalston Gazette—which seemed to consist principally of advertisements. I picked it up, however, and, opening it at the centre page, made a deliberate pretence of glancing through the local news.
For a moment or two the conversation at the other end of the bar languished; then, as if renewing a former discussion, the landlord suddenly addressed himself to Mr. Watson.