The man in the next chair roused him by putting down his tumbler with a tap, and seating himself upon the cushioned fender. Through the mist of smoke, with shoulders hunched, elbows and knees crooked out, cigar protruding, beak-ways, below his nose, and the crimson collar of his smoking jacket buttoned close as plumage on his breast, he looked a little like a gorgeous bird.
“They do you awfully well,” he said.
A voice from the chair on Shelton's right replied,
“They do you better at Verado's.”
“The Veau d'.r 's the best place; they give you Turkish baths for nothing!” drawled a fat man with a tiny mouth.
The suavity of this pronouncement enfolded all as with a blessing. And at once, as if by magic, in the old, oak-panelled room, the world fell naturally into its three departments: that where they do you well; that where they do you better; and that where they give you Turkish baths for nothing.
“If you want Turkish baths,” said a tall youth with clean red face, who had come into the room, and stood, his mouth a little open, and long feet jutting with sweet helplessness in front of him, “you should go, you know, to Buda Pesth; most awfully rippin' there.”
Shelton saw an indescribable appreciation rise on every face, as though they had been offered truffles or something equally delicious.
“Oh no, Poodles,” said the man perched on the fender. “A Johnny I know tells me they 're nothing to Sofia.” His face was transfigured by the subtle gloating of a man enjoying vice by proxy.
“Ah!” drawled the small-mouthed man, “there 's nothing fit to hold a candle to Baghda-ad.”