“No,” said he, determinedly. “Thank you just the same. I’m lunching downtown. I—I thought perhaps she’d like to join me.”
Rachel rang for the elevator and he departed, amiably doffing his hat to her as he dropped to the floor below.
At one of the popular corner tables in the big café a party of men and women were seated, seven or eight in all. Nellie Duluth had her back toward the other tables in the room. It was a bit of modesty that she always affected. She did not like being stared at. Besides, she could hold her audience to the very end, so to speak, for all in the place knew she was there and were willing to wait until she condescended to face them in the process of departure.
It was a very gay party, comprising a grand-opera soprano and a tenor of world-wide reputation, as well as three or four very well-known New Yorkers. Manifestly, it was Fairfax’s luncheon. The crowd at this table was observed by all the neck-craners in the place. Every one was telling every one else what 107 every one knew:—“That’s Nellie Duluth over there.”
As the place began to clear out and tables were being abandoned here and there, a small man in a checked suit appeared in the doorway. An attendant took his hat and coat away from him while he was gazing with kaleidoscopic instability of vision upon the gay scene before him. He had left his walking-stick in a street car, a circumstance which delayed him a long time, for, on missing it, he waited at a corner in the hope of recognising the motorman on his return trip up Madison Avenue.
The head-waiter was bowing before him and murmuring, “How many, sir?”
“How many what?” mumbled Harvey, with a start.
“In your party?” asked the man, not half so politely and with a degree of distance in his attitude. It did not look profitable.
“Oh! Only one, sir. Just a sandwich and a cup of coffee, I think.”
There was a little table away over in the corner sandwiched between the doors of entrance and egress for laden waiters and ’bus boys. Toward this a hastily summoned second 108 or third assistant conducted the newcomer. Twice during the process of traversing this illimitable space Harvey bumped against chairs occupied by merry persons who suddenly became crabbed and asked him who the devil he was stumbling over.