He dressed rapidly. The street below had not yet awakened to Christmas Day, and the colonel, with Christmas in his heart, felt eager as a messenger of good news.
An hour later, as he returned, all refreshed in soul, from the minster, he ran against the second waiter, blinking in the sunlight on the door-step of the hotel, and looking as though he had slept in his evening suit.
'I want breakfast at once,' said the colonel; 'and for luncheon you may put me up a basket.'
'There was to have been a cold turkey,' said the waiter, 'it being
Christmas Day.'
'Put in the turkey, then—the whole turkey, please—and two bottles of champagne. I'll take my luncheon out.'
'Two bottles, sir, did I understand you to say?'
'Certainly. Two bottles.'
'Which the amount for corkage is cruel,' said the waiter as he delivered his order at the office. 'My word, and what an appetite! But I done him an injustice in one respec'. He do seem to be every inch a gentleman.'
So the waiter's verdict, after all, sounded much the same as Miss Lapenotiere's. And the conclusion seems to be that you can not only say the same thing in different ways, but quite different things in identical words.