"Once before, sir," said he. "Niagara Falls, sir."
* * * * * * *
CHAPTER XV — I TRAVERSE THE NIGHT
We were drenched to the skin and bespattered with mud, cold and cheerless but full of a grim excitement. Across the street from the small, poorly lighted railway station there was an eating-house. Leaving the car in the shelter of a freight shed, we sloshed through the shiny rivulet that raced between the curbs and entered the clean, unpretentious little restaurant.
There was a rousing smell of roasted coffee pervading the place. A sleepy German waiter first came up and glanced sullenly at the mud-tracks we left upon the floor; then he allowed his insulting gaze to trail our progress to the lunch counter by means of a perfect torrent of rain-water drippings. He went out of the room grumbling, to return a moment later with a huge mop. Thereupon he ordered us out of the place, standing ready with the mop to begin the cleansing process the instant we vacated the stools. It was quite clear to both of us that he wanted to begin operations at the exact spot where we were standing.
"Coffee for two," said I, in German. To me anything uttered in the German language sounds gruff and belligerent, no matter how gentle its meaning. That amiable sentence: "Ich liebe dich" is no exception; to me it sounds relentless. I am confident that I asked for coffee in a very mild and ingratiating tone, in direct contrast to his command to get out, and was somewhat ruffled by his stare of speechless rage.
"Zwei," said Britton, pointing to the big coffee urn.
The fellow began mopping around my feet—in fact, he went so far as to mop the tops of them and a little way up my left leg in his efforts to make a good, clean job of it.