“Bosh! I’ve been at the top of Saint Paul’s. Not a bad place to smoke a cigarette.”
He lit one with a great deal of nourish, leaned over the rail, and began puffing little clouds of smoke into the air; but all the same he did not seem to enjoy it, and at the end of a few minutes allowed the little roll of tobacco to go out.
“What time do you dine here?” he said; “seven?”
Tom laughed.
“Two o’clock,” he said.
“I said dinner, not lunch, stupid.”
“I know what you said,” replied Tom, rather sharply, but he changed his tone directly afterward. “We don’t have lunch, but early dinner, and tea at six.”
“How horrible!” said Sam. “Here, let’s go down.”
He stepped back into the observatory, looking sharply at everything while Tom secured the shutter, and then they went down into the laboratory, which evidently took the visitor’s attention.
“Wouldn’t be a bad place with a good Turkey carpet and some easy-chairs. I should make it my smoking-room if I lived down here. I mean if I was transported down here.”