It's to take away the taste of the vodka.
VASILI [laughing]. I lift my hat to you.
PIKE. You never worked on a farm in your own country, Doc?
VASILI. That has been denied me.
PIKE. I expect so. Talk about things to drink! Harvest-time, and the
women folks coming out from the house with a two-gallon jug of ice-cold
buttermilk!
[Sets down the glass and whistles softly with delight.]
[HORACE shows increasing signs of annoyance.]
VASILI. You still enjoy those delights?
PIKE. Not since I moved up to our county-seat ten years ago and began to
practice law. Things don't taste the same in the city.
VASILI. You do not like your city?
PIKE [not with braggadocio, but earnestly, almost pathetically]. Like
it? Well, sir, for public buildings and architecture, I wouldn't trade
our State insane asylum for the worst-ruined ruin in Europe--not for
hygiene and real comfort.
VASILI. And your people?
PIKE. The best on earth. Out _my_ way folks are neighbors.
[HORACE snaps his paper sharply.]
VASILI. But you have no leisure class.
[VASILI is looking keenly at HAWCASTLE and HORACE as he speaks.]
PIKE. Got a pretty good-sized colored population.
VASILI. I mean no aristocracy--no great old families such as we have,
that go back and back to the Middle Ages.
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