“That’s entirely too sweet for a thirsty man,” she said.

She poured out half the mixture, and refilling the glass, tasted it a second time.  She submitted that result to the attendant.  “Isn’t that about the thing?” she asked.

He replied enthusiastically.  “I’d get my wages raised ten a month if I could learn that trick.”

The Angel carried the brimming, frosty glass to Freckles.  He removed his hat, and lifting the icy liquid even with her eyes and looking straight into them, he said in the mellowest of all the mellow tones of his voice:  “I’ll be drinking it to the Swamp Angel.”

As he had said to her that first day, she now cautioned him:  “Be drinking slowly.”

When the screen-door swung behind them, one of the men at the counter asked of the attendant:  “Now, what did that mean?”

“Exactly what you saw,” replied he, rather curtly.  “We’re accustomed to it here.  Hardly a day passes, this hot weather, but she’s picking up some poor, god-forsaken mortal and bringing him in.  Then she comes behind the counter herself and fixes up a drink to suit the occasion.  She’s all sorts of fancies about what’s what for all kinds of times and conditions, and you bet she can just hit the spot!  Ain’t a clerk here can put up a drink to touch her.  She’s a sort of knack at it.  Every once in a while, when the Boss sees her, he calls out to her to mix him a drink.”

“And does she?” asked the man with an interested grin.

“Well, I guess!  But first she goes back and sees how long it is since he’s had a drink.  What he drank last.  How warm he is.  When he ate last.  Then she comes here and mixes a glass of fizz with a little touch of acid, and a bit of cherry, lemon, grape, pineapple, or something sour and cooling, and it hits the spot just as no spot was ever hit before.  I honestly believe that the interest she takes in it is half the trick, for I watch her closely and I can’t come within gunshot of her concoctions.  She has a running bill here.  Her father settles once a month.  She gives nine-tenths of it away.  Hardly ever touches it herself, but when she does she makes me mix it.  She’s just old persimmons.  Even the scrub-boy of this establishment would fight for her.  It lasts the year round, for in winter it’s some poor, frozen cuss that she’s warming up on hot coffee or chocolate.”

“Mighty queer specimen she had this time,” volunteered another.  “Irish, hand off, straight as a ramrod, and something worth while in his face.  Notice that hat peel off, and the eyes of him?  There’s a case of ’fight for her!’ Wonder who he is?”

“I think,” said a third, “that he’s McLean’s Limberlost guard, and I suspect she’s gone to the swamp with the Bird Woman for pictures and knows him that way.  I’ve heard that he is a master hand with the birds, and that would just suit the Bird Woman to a T.”

On the street the Angel walked beside Freckles to the first crossing and there she stopped.  “Now, will you promise to ride fast enough to make up for the five minutes that took?” she asked.  “I am a little uneasy about Mrs. Duncan.”