"Oh, yes," said Marriott, "about that case of his. I must attend to that, but I’ve been so busy." He glanced at his disordered desk, with its hopeless litter of papers. "Let’s see," he went on meditatively, "I guess"--he thought a moment, "I guess I might as well go out there this afternoon as any time. How far is it?"
"Colorado Avenue, I think. I’ll go ’long, if you want me."
"I’ll be delighted," said Marriott. He thought a moment longer, then closed his desk, and said, "We’ll go now."
When they got off the elevator twelve floors below, Dick said:
"I’ve got to have a drink before I start. Will you join me?"
"I just had luncheon a while ago," said Marriott; "I don’t really--"
"I never got to bed till morning," said Dick. "I sat in a little game at the club last night, and I’m all in."
Marriott, amused by the youth’s pride in his dissipation, went with him to the café in the basement. Standing before the polished bar, with one foot on the brass rail, Dick said to the white-jacketed bartender:
"I want a high-ball; you know my brand, George. What’s yours, Gordon?"
"Oh, I’ll take the same." Marriott watched Dick pour a generous libation over the ice in the glass.
"Don’t forget the imported soda," added Dick with an air of the utmost seriousness and importance, and the bartender, swiftly pulling the corks, said:
The car for which they waited in the drifting crowd at the corner was half an hour in getting them out to the neighborhood in which the Koerners lived. They stood on the rear platform all the way, because, as Dick said, he had to smoke, and as he consumed his cigarettes, he discoursed to Marriott of the things that filled his life--his card games and his drinking at the club, his constant attendance at theaters and cafés. His cheeks were fresh and rosy as a girl’s, and smooth from the razor they did not need. Marriott, as he looked at him, saw a resemblance to Elizabeth, and this gave the boy an additional charm for him. He studied this resemblance, but he could not analyze it. Dick had neither his sister’s features nor her complexion; and yet the resemblance was there, flitting, remote, revealing itself one instant to disappear the next, evading and eluding him. He could not account for it, yet its effect was to make his heart warm toward the boy, to make him love him.