An oily waiter ambled up to us and wrung his hands in a paroxysm of welcome.
"Your tabil, Meester Norman," he said in some nondescript foreign dialect, "iss ready."
Good heavens! The Blower of Bubbles had even ordered dinner in advance! With the feelings of an unwilling martyr, I followed my friend and his escort past tawdry millinery saleswomen, dining in state with their knights-errant of the haberdashery stores; by a table where a woman was gazing admiringly at a man with a face as expressionless as a pumpkin; through a lane of chattering, laughing, rasping denizens of the London that is neither West End nor East End—of people whose clothes, faces, and voices merged into a positive debauch of mediocrity.
When we were seated and had ordered something from the waiter, I turned to Basil Norman for an explanation.
"What is it?" I asked. "An affair with a seamstress, or are you just looking for 'copy'?"
He laughed and lit a cigarette.
"Pest," he said, "this is a caprice of mine, a tit-bit for my vanity. You would have chosen the 'Trocadero' or the 'Ritz,' with all the tyranny of Olympian and largessed waiters with whom it is impossible to attain the least pretence of equality. I prefer 'Arcadia,' where I am something of a patron saint, and am even consulted by the proprietor."
"You play to humble audiences."
"Quietly, Pest—the proprietor might hear you. He is a very Magog for dignity, I assure you, in spite of his asthma."
"I gather, then, that you are a regular diner here?"