“Dr. Livingstone, I presume.”
“Hicket,” said the Consul, taken aback by the premature rediscovery, at such close quarters, of the tall slightly stooping figure, in khaki shirt and grey flannel trousers, sandalled, immaculate, grey-haired, complete, fit, a credit to Soda Springs, and carrying a watering-can, who was regarding him distastefully through horn-rimmed spectacles from the other side of the fence. “Ah, good morning, Quincey.”
“What’s good about it?” The retired walnut grower asked suspiciously, continuing his work of watering his flower beds, which were out of range of the ceaselessly swinging hoses.
The Consul gestured toward his briars, and perhaps unconsciously also in the direction of the tequila bottle. “I saw you from over there . . . I was just out inspecting my jungle,
