At breakfast he was positively gay, so that Ada wondered furtively what he was up to, and whether the way to raise his spirits would always be to demand new clothes of him. It did not seem likely, but she proposed at any rate to experiment freely in that direction.
He divided his attention between her, breakfast, and the Parliamentary report of the Times. He felt that he had virtually participated in that debate, and even the shock of reading that the division had gone against his hero did not spoil the pleasure he found in reading of it. He read with a prophetic eye. He, too, would be reported in the Times some day.
He called the waiter. “Marmalade, sir?” asked the man.
“No, thanks. Bring me the directory.”
“The directory,” protested the waiter, “is in the reading-room.”
“And I,” said Sam superbly, “am in the coffee-room.”
The waiter brought him the directory.
Sam smiled broadly. He was testing his form, and decided that if it were equal to coercing a waiter into carrying a directory to his breakfast-table, it would probably not fail him in what he proposed to do. He consulted the book and noted an address which was not, he observed, in Park Lane. His respect for Sir William Gatenby suffered a slight decline.
Half an hour later he rang the hell of that gentleman’s house. Gatenby was the local member, to whom Peter Struggles had written for Sam’s pass to the Gallery.
“Sir William in?” he asked.