es.

"I really beg your pardon," I said. "I didn't know you were there!"

The fierce expression of the bloodshot eyes changed to one of somewhat
forced amiability.

"Pray don't apologise," he answered, with just the merest touch of a
foreign accent in his voice, that sort of undetectable accent which
some men of cosmopolitan habits possess, though they are rarely met
with.

"I think I must have been asleep," he added, "and the little shock
awoke me from a disagreeable dream. There is really so little to do in
this place besides bathing and sleeping."

"And water drinking," I suggested, with a smile.

"I do as little of that," he answered hastily, with a grimace, "as I
possibly can. By the bye though," he continued, wheeling round his
chair sociably beside mine, "do you know that the Bath water taken
_hot_ with a good dash of whisky in it and two lumps of sugar is not
half bad?"

I took a good look at his face as he sat leering at me through his
glasses. From the congested look of it, I could quite believe that he
had sampled this mixture, or others of a similar alcoholic nature,
sufficiently to give an opinion on the point; his bloodshot eyes also
testified to the fact.

But concerning these latter features, the reason of the curious look
about them was solved by the firelight; one of them was of glass! I
saw that it remained stationary whilst the other leered round the
corner of the gold-rimmed pince-nez at me. It was a very good
imitation, and was made _bloodshot_ to match the other.

My tea and buttered toast arrived now, and I made a vigorous attack
upon the latter.

"The idea of mixing whisky with Bath water," I replied, laughing,
"never struck me. It appears novel."

"I can assure you," continued my new acquaintance, "that many of the
old men who are ordered here to Bath do it, and I should not be
surprised to hear that it is a practice among the old ladies too. Look
at their faces as they come waddling down to table d'hote!"

This appeared to me rather a disrespectful remark with regard to the
opposite sex, and I answered him somewhat stiffly, "I hope you are
deceived."

He was not a tactful person by any means: he made an observation then
concerning my tea and buttered toast.

"I really wonder," he said, "how you can drink that stuff," with a nod
towards my cup. "It would make me sick; put it away and have a whisky
and soda with me?"

I naturally considered this a very rude remark f