He grabbed Atwater’s derby from the hook next his own and jammed it on his studious head, wholly against Sam’s ideas of right and wrong.
“Come along!” cried Joe, recovering his own broad-brimmed gray felt—a daily companion of his Beaux-Arts days, which had sheltered him through dozens of like little extravagances that his pocket always suffered for on the morrow. And so the two went off to old Tom’s chop-house in Trinity Lane, where they had, heeding the counsel of old Tom himself, a “combination” of spicy sausage, juicy chop, and a broiled kidney, sizzling hot, and done to a turn, that genial little Irishman in his shirt-sleeves further suggesting, with his habitual abbreviation of vegetables, a little “cel” and a little “spin” on the side, and two pints of his oldest ale, nearly as dark and powerful as Hartligan’s oldest, next door, and with two cross-sections of hot mince pie to follow, “mince with a slip on,” smothered under the best of Welsh rarebits, all of which in due time, as Tom had promised, were poked through the blackened worn hole connecting with the busy kitchen, and were devoured serenely, without as much as ruffling the digestion of youth.
“I feel better,” declared Joe, and he looked it. So did Atwater, though he had broken a whole golden rule in regard to light luncheons and his duty to his drawing-board. He was also worrying about the pie.
“Let’s have another,” coaxed Joe, as he pinioned his last morsel of mince-meat, flaky pie-crust, and melted cheese nimbly on his steel fork and calmly raised it.
“Let’s what?” exclaimed Atwater, aghast. “More of that pie? Not on your life. That stuff will put you on the Christmas tree if you get the habit.”
“I’ll split one with you,” laughed Joe. “Come on, be a game sport.”
“No, you won’t,” declared Atwater firmly.
“Now, Sammy; it’s my fête day.”
“You wait until you get the bill, and you’ll think it’s New Year’s,” remarked Atwater gravely.
“Ben Jonson and good old Falstaff would have been tickled to death with this place,” enthused Joe, sipping his coffee and unheeding the anxious look in Atwater’s eyes, as he ordered two light panetelas. “Nothing like good food for inspiration, old man. Hanged if I wouldn’t like to have a tavern of my own—bumpers—trenchers, old beams, cobwebs, and troubadours, buxom lasses, a few captains of fortune with their ready blades, and the mail-coach due at one. Veiled lady getting out, assisted by his Grace the Duke. Dogs, minions, and stable-boys—small, fair-haired child running with bunch of posies for the Duke’s lady, smiling Boniface in doorway with napkin. Steaming leaders stamping out of their trace-chains—and a fight in the back room——”