"Yes, you're Mr. Hayes. Oh, I remember you quite well. Been away since?"
"No, I've been here. I mean—at work, and so on."
"Oh, well!" sighed the Nun (Andy ventured to call her the Nun in his thoughts, though she had changed her persuasion). She seemed to express a gentle resignation to not being able to keep track of people; she met so many, coming every day to the restaurant.
"I ask five, I want four, but with just the right fellow I'd take three," said Billy's brother Gilly, apparently continuing a conversation which seemed to interest nobody but himself; for the Nun was looking at neighbouring hats, Miss Dutton had relapsed into gloomy abstraction, and Billy was thoughtfully revolving a small quantity of old brandy round a very large glass. Gilly had an old brandy too, but his attitude towards it was one of studied neglect. His favourite vintage had given out the year before, so his life was rather desolate.
"Harry's engaged," Andy volunteered to the Nun, glad to possess a remark of such commanding interest.
"To a girl?" asked the Nun, absently and without turning her face towards him.
"Well, of course!" said Andy. What else could one be engaged to?
"Everybody comes to it," said Billy Foot. "Take three, if you must, Gilly."
"At a push," said his brother sadly.
"I hate that hat on that woman," said the Nun with a sudden vehemence, nodding her head at a fat woman in a large purple erection. Hats moved the Nun perhaps more than anything else in the world.