Then in the order of their coming they issued
through another door upon the side street, each, as he disappeared,
turning his face half round, and casting a casual glance upon a little
group near another counter. The group was of a very patient,
half-frightened, half-puzzled looking gentleman who sat perfectly still
on a stool, and of a lady who stood beside him, rubbing all over his head
a handkerchief full of pounded ice, and easing one hand with the other
when the first became tired. Basil drank his soda and paused to look upon
this group, which he felt would commend itself to realistic sculpture as
eminently characteristic of the local life, and as "The Sunstroke" would
sell enormously in the hot season. "Better take a little more of that,"
the apothecary said, looking up from his prescription, and, as the
organized sympathy of the seemingly indifferent crowd, smiling very
kindly at his patient, who thereupon tasted something in the glass he
held. "Do you still feel like fainting?" asked the humane authority.
"Slightly, now and then," answered the other, "but I'm hanging on hard to
the bottom curve of that icicled S on your soda-fountain, and I feel that
I'm all right as long as I can see that.
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