As he deposited his deck-load upon the counter, great drops
of perspiration rolled down his face and over his waterlogged collar
to the floor.
There was something exquisitely refreshing in the great glasses of
foaming soda that a spruce young man was drawing from a marble
fountain, above which half a dozen polar bears in an ambitious print
were disporting themselves. There came a break in the run of
customers, and the spruce young man, having swept the foam from the
marble, dexterously lifted a glass from the revolving rack which had
rinsed it with a fierce little stream of water, and asked
mechanically, as he caught the intense look of the perspiring elder,
"What syrup, sir?"
Now it had not occurred to the elder to drink soda, but the
suggestion, coming as it did in his exhausted state, was overpowering.
He drew near awkwardly, put on his glasses, and examined the list of
syrups with great care. The young man, being for the moment at
leisure, surveyed critically the gaunt figure, the faded bandanna, the
antique clawhammer coat, and the battered stove-pipe hat, with a
gradually relaxing countenance.
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