Bar as "The Old Man." A man of perhaps fifty years; grizzled and scant
of hair, but still fresh and youthful of complexion. A face full of
ready, but not very powerful sympathy, with a chameleon-like aptitude
for taking on the shade and color of contiguous moods and feelings. He
had evidently just left some hilarious companions, and did not at first
notice the gravity of the group, but clapped the shoulder of the nearest
man jocularly, and threw himself into a vacant chair.
"Jest heard the best thing out, boys! Ye know Smiley, over yar,--Jim
Smiley,--funniest man in the Bar? Well, Jim was jest telling the richest
yarn about--"
"Smiley's a ---- fool," interrupted a gloomy voice.
"A particular ---- skunk," added another in sepulchral accents.
A silence followed these positive statements. The Old Man glanced
quickly around the group. Then his face slowly changed. "That's so,"
he said reflectively, after a pause, "certingly a sort of a skunk and
suthin of a fool. In course." He was silent for a moment as in painful
contemplation of the unsavoriness and folly of the unpopular Smiley.
"Dismal weather, ain't it?" he added, now fully embarked on the current
of prevailing sentiment. "Mighty rough papers on the boys, and no show
for money this season. And tomorrow's Christmas."
There was a movement among the men at this announcement, but whether of
satisfaction or disgust was not plain. "Yes," continued the Old Man in
the lugubrious tone he had, within the last few moments, unconsciously
adopted,--"yes, Christmas, and to-night's Christmas eve. Ye see, boys,
I kinder thought--that is, I sorter had an idee, jest passin' like, you
know--that may be ye'd all like to come over to my house to-night and
have a sort of tear round. But I suppose, now, you wouldn't? Don't feel
like it, may be?" he added with anxious sympathy, peering into the faces
of his companions.
"Well, I don't know," responded Tom Flynn with some cheerfulness.
"P'r'aps we may. But how about your wife, Old Man? What does SHE say to
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