“Sure!” replied Ed Gillette heartily.
“This is on us,” Al Thompson hastened to add.
The Scotsman led the way. Whether he had grasped the implied offer of hospitality is doubtful. However, that hardened cynic Joe McCarthy cherished no illusions on the subject. He sniffed contemptuously.
Their walk towards The Strand—it is to be feared that their guide’s sense of direction was once or twice at fault—gave them further opportunities of studying the habits and customs of the strange race upon whom they had descended. In one quiet street—there are many such in London these days, for traffic is down to a minimum—they beheld a middle-aged lady hail a crawling taxi-cab. The driver of the vehicle took not the slightest notice, but slid upon his way.
“There’s jest twa-three o’ they taxis nowadays where formerly there was a hunnerd in a street,” explained that man-about-town, Private Andrew Drummond. “Consequently, they can pick and choose. They’ll no tak’ a body that looks ower carefu’ of their money. There’s another yin! He’ll give the auld wife the go-bye too, I’m thinking. She doesna look like yin o’ the extravagant soort.”
He was right. A second taxi sauntered past the gesticulating lady. This time the driver, after a single fleeting glance, condescended to flip his right hand in the air, in a gesture which may have been intended to indicate that he had particular business elsewhere, but more probably expressed his contempt for the pedestrian world in general.
The gesture was observed by a passing citizen—an elderly gentleman with white whiskers and spats—who, at first appropriating it to himself, stopped and glared at the offender. Then noting beauty in distress upon the sidewalk, he assailed the taxi with indignant cries.
“Hi, there! Taxi! Stop! Stop, there! Don’t you see the lady hailing you?”
The taxi-driver perfectly impassive, pressed his accelerator.