earnestly applied himself to the Bourbon and he was in a state of superb philanthropy. Elmer had taken enough to feel reasonable. He was hungry, too, not only for alcohol but for unsanctimonious companionship.
"I'll tell you, Ad," he said. "Nothing I'd like better, but I've got to meet a guy—important dealer—this afternoon, and he's dead against all drinking. Fact—I certainly do appreciate your booze, but don't know's I ought to have taken a single drop."
"Oh, hell, Elm, I've got some throat pastilles that are absolutely guaranteed to knock out the smell—absolutely. One lil drink wouldn't do us any harm. Certainly would like to have the boys hear that toast of yours!"
"Well, I'll sneak in for a second, and maybe I can foregather with you for a while late Sunday evening or Monday morning, but—"
"Aw, you ain't going to let me down, Elm?"
"Well, I'll telephone this guy, and fix it so's I don't have to see him till long 'bout three o'clock."
"That's great!"
From the Ishawonga Hotel, at noon, Elmer telephoned to the office of Mr. Eversley, the brightest light of the Flowerdale Baptist Church. There was no answer.
"Everybody in his office out to dinner. Well, I've done all I can till this afternoon," Elmer reflected virtuously, and joined the Pequot crusaders in the Ishawonga bar. . . . Eleven men in a booth for eight. Every one talking at once. Every one shouting, "Say, waiter, you ask that damn' bartender if he's making the booze!"
Within seventeen minutes Elmer was calling all of the eleven by their first names—frequently by the wrong first names—and he contributed to their literary lore by thrice reciting his toast and by telling the best stories he knew. They liked him. In his joy of release from piety and the threat of life with Lulu, he flowered into vigor. Six several times the Pequot salesmen said one to another, "Now there's a fellow we ought to have with us in the firm," and the others nodded.
