A thin thread-line of illumination at the bottom of the inner door showed that there was a light in the Harrison kitchen. Daisy was glad Jean had remained up for her; for, although she knew the way to the bedroom, she felt a little like a thief, prowling around the big house, on this her first unfamiliar night in it. She opened the kitchen door. The snarl of a heavy foot turning on linoleum followed the click of the latch. Daisy saw that the tenant of the kitchen was not Jean, but Sir Thomas Harrison himself, standing in his shirt-sleeves near the faucet, drawing some water in a tumbler. Sir Thomas did not look so young with his tailor-built coat off. The slight sag in the shoulders and bulge at the waist became apparent when in his shirt-sleeves. "We-ell, well," he said, holding up the glass and measuring the minim of water in it with his eye, "look who's with us, will yuh! Just in from keepin' the little date, hey?--he-ey, littul one? Work don't worry us none, does it? Well, little stranger, you're just in time for to have one, on me. _Suddown!_" This last with a raise of his voice and a motion of his forefinger--his thick, blunt forefinger--toward one of the two chairs that stood by the table. Daisy, her dimples and twinkles leaping into place with a celerity that might have warned Harrison if he had known her better, sat down obediently and demurely in the chair. Sir Thomas Harrison took another tumbler, put in it a small amount of water, brought it over to the table, and set it down alongside the other glass. Then he took a cut-glass decanter he had brought from a cabinet in the dining-room, unstoppered it, and filled each of the drinking vessels. Finally, wrinkling up his eyes until one was quite closed, and the other nearly so, he tilted his head on one side, pulled an empty chair close to and facing Daisy, and sat down in it. "Well, chookie," he said, "here we are--just the two of us, hey? Everybody else in bed, but--we sh'd worry. Come on, now, an' have a little drink. C'm on!" Daisy, as though she intended to drink, put out a hand and drew her glass toward her. In her eyes two vigilant and mischievous points of light danced keen as stars. Sir Thomas Harrison tipped his glass joltingly against hers, set it to the lips that bulged red and coarse-textured, below his clipped moustache; and tossed off his liquor. Then he smacked his glass down on the table, where Daisy's still stood untouched. "Well," he said, "why don't y' drink? But don't if yuh don't wantah. Maybe 'taint good for little girls. Apt to make 'em fr-risky, hey? I know somethin' is better for 'em. O you baby, you _sassy_ babee--come on to Poppa," and, with a sudden movement, Sir Thomas Harrison caught his new dining-room girl by the wrist and drew her upon his fleshy knee.