“Nor will I, then. Oh yes, I will, though—I’ll have some dry ginger ale. Here, waiter! Bring me a small dry ginger ale.”
The waiter, with the force of habit, bent his head questioningly for my order too.
“You said——?” asked my exasperating friend. He was right down in the mists now, and I knew I should never get him up again this side of lunch.
“I said nothing, thanks.”
“Nothing, then, for this gentleman,” he continued, gazing up at the waiter as though he were some monster seen for the first time, “and for me—a dry ginger ale, please.”
“Yes, sir,” said the man, moving off.
“Small,” the other called after him.
“Yessir—small.”
“And a slice of lemon in it.”
The waiter inclined his head respectfully from the door. The other turned to me, searching in his perturbed mind—I could tell it by the way his eyes worked—for the trail of his vanished conversation. Before he got it, however, he slithered round again on the leather seat towards the door.