"Oh, Maudie's all right!" the young lady replied. "Fortunately for her, she's like me—she don't lay too much store on the things you gentlemen say when you come in. Staying away for months at a time!" she continued indignantly. "I'm ashamed of both of you. It's the way we girls always get treated. I shall tell them to lay for you for lunch to-day, anyway."
The two men looked at one another across the round table. Mr.
Waddington heaved a sigh.
"I shouldn't bother about that sale, if I were you," Burton whispered hoarsely. "I tell you what it is, I daren't go on like this any longer. I shall do something desperate. This horrible place is getting attractive to me! I shall probably sit here and order more beer and wait till Maud comes; I shall stay to lunch and sit with my arm around her afterwards! I am going to take a bean at once."
Mr. Waddington sighed and produced the snuff-box from his waistcoat pocket. Burton followed suit. The young woman, leaning across the counter, watched them curiously.
"What's that you're taking?" she inquired. "Something for indigestion?"
"Not exactly," Mr. Waddington replied. "It's a little ailment I'm suffering from, and Burton too."
They both swallowed their beans. Burton gave a deep sigh.
"I feel safe again," he murmured. "I am certain that I was on the point of suggesting that she send up for Maud. We might have taken them out together to-night, Mr. Waddington—had dinner at Frascati's, drunk cheap champagne, and gone to a music-hall!"
"Burton," Mr. Waddington said calmly, "I do not for a moment believe that we should so far have forgotten ourselves. I don't know how you are feeling, but the atmosphere of this place is most distasteful to me. These tawdry decorations are positively vicious. The odor, too, is insufferable."
Burton rose hastily to his feet.