Alcoholics -- Great Britain -- Fiction; Alcoholism -- Great Britain -- Fiction; Temperance -- Fiction
"_Say, brother, have you not full oft Found, even as the Roman did,
That in Life's most delicious cup Surgit Amari Aliquid!_"
The girl heard him sigh and turned quickly. She saw that her friend's
face was overcast.
It was so much to her, this moment, she was so happy since she had
stepped from the hot streets of the city into fairyland with the
Magician, that there must be no single shadow.
"Come!" she said gaily, "this is perfect but there are other perfect
things waiting. Wave your wand again, Prospero, and change the magic
scene."
Lothian jumped up from his seat.
"Yes! on into the sunset. You are right. We must go before we are
satisfied. That's the whole art of living--Miranda!"
Her eyes twinkled with mischief.
"How old you have grown all of a sudden," she said, but as they passed
through the inn once more he thought with wonder that if six years were
added to his age he might have been her father in very fact. Many a man
of forty-one or two had girls as old as she.
He sent her to the motor, on pretence of stopping to pay for the milk,
but in the little bar-parlour he hurriedly ordered whiskey--"a large
one, yes, only half the soda."
The landlord poured it out with great speed, understanding immediately.
He must have been used to this furtive taking in of the fuel, here was
another accustomed acolyte of alcohol.
"Next stop Brighton, sir," he said with a genial wink.
Lothian's melancholy passed away like a stone falling through water as
the car started once more. He said something wildly foolish and
discovered, with a throb of amazement and recognition, that she could
play! He had never met a girl before who could play, as he liked to
play.
There was a strain of impish, freakish humour in Lothian which few
people understood, which few _sensible_ people ever can understand. It
is hardly to be defined, it seems incredibly childish and mad to the
majority of folk, but it sweetens life to those who have it. And such
people are very rare, so that when one meets another there is a
surprised and delighted welcome, a freemason's greeting, a shout of joy
in Laughter Land!
"Good heavens!" he said, "and you can play then!"
There was no need to mention the name of the game--it has none
indeed--but Rita understood. Her sweet face wrinkled into impish
mischief and she nodded.
"Didn't you know?"
"How could I possibly?"
"No, you couldn't of course, but I never thought it of _you_."
"Nor I of you," he answered. "I'll test you. 'The cow is in the
garden.'"
"'The cat is in the lake,'" she answered instantly.
"'The pig is in the hammock?'"
"'What difference _does_ it make?'" she shouted triumphantly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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