I'd not
dare go to bed without taking an antidote for that
poison.''
But Presbury had not been altogether improvident.
He had hoped great things of Bill Siddall's wine-cellar
--this despite an almost unbroken series of bitter
disillusionments and disappointments in experience with
those who had the wealth to buy, if they had had the
taste to select, the fine wines he loved. So, resolving
to indulge himself, he had put into his bag his pair of
gout-boots.
This was a device of his own inventing, on which he
prided himself. It consisted of a pair of roomy doe-
skin slippers reenforced with heavy soles and provided
with a set of three thin insoles to be used according as
the state of his toes made advisable. The cost of the
Presbury gout-boot had been, thanks to patient search
for a cheap cobbler, something under four dollars--
this, when men paid shoe specialists twenty, thirty, and
even forty dollars a pair for gout-boots that gave less
comfort. The morning after the dinner at which he
had drunk to drown his chagrin and to give him courage
and tongue for sycophantry, he put on the boots.
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