"... put it to the touch To gain or lose it all."
He saw it coming: before long he and that Italian would be at each other's throats.
"Come in!" he called, in response to a sudden thunder on the door.
The door opened and a short, energetic old man, purple-visaged and hawk-eyed, came in. "Why the devil don't you join the Trappist monks, Abbott? If I wasn't tough I should have died of apoplexy on the second landing."
"Good morning, Colonel!" Abbott laughed and rolled out the patent rocker for his guest. "What's on your mind this morning? I can give you one without ice."
"I'll take it neat, my boy. I'm not thirsty, I'm faint. These Italian architects; they call three ladders flights of stairs! ... Ha! That's Irish whisky, and jolly fine. Want you to come over and take tea this afternoon. I'm going up presently to see the Harrigans. Thought I'd go around and do the thing informally. Taken a fancy to the old chap. He's a little bit of all right. I'm no older than he is, but look at the difference! Whisky and soda, that's the racket. Not by the tubful; just an ordinary half dozen a day, and a dem climate thrown in."
"Rot! It's the sized hat a man wears. I'd give fifty guineas to see the old fellow in action. But, I say; recall the argument we had before you went to Paris?"
"Well, I win. Saw him bang across the street this morning."
"The old boy had transferred his regiment to a lonesome post in the North to cool his blood. The youngster took the next train to Paris. He was there incognito for two weeks before they found him and bundled him back. Of course, every one knows that he is but a crazy lad who's had too much freedom." The colonel emptied his glass. "I feel dem sorry for Nora. She's the right sort. But a woman can't take a man by the scruff of his neck and chuck him."
"Tut, tut! He'd eat you alive. Besides, you will find him too clever to give you an opening. But he'll bear watching. He's capable of putting her on a train and running away with her. Between you and me, I don't blame him. What's the matter with sicking the Barone on him? He's the best man in Southern Italy with foils and broadswords. Sic 'em, Towser; sic 'em!" The old fire-eater chuckled.
The subject was extremely distasteful to the artist. The colonel, a rough soldier, whose diplomacy had never risen above the heights of clubbing a recalcitrant Hill man into submission, baldly inferred that he understood the artist's interest in the rose of the Harrigan family. He would have liked to talk more in regard to the interloper, but it would have been sheer folly. The colonel, in his blundering way, would have brought up the subject again at tea-time and put everybody on edge. He had, unfortunately for his friends, a reputation other than that of a soldier: he posed as a peacemaker. He saw trouble where none existed, and the way he patched up imaginary quarrels would have strained the patience of Job. Still, every one loved him, though they lived in mortal fear of him. So Abbott came about quickly and sailed against the wind.