Dickie tasted a homely memory—"Dickie damn fool." He stood silent a moment looking down with one of his quaint, impersonal looks.
"Well, sir," then he said slowly, "it ain't your order, but you look a whole lot more like a feller that would order Spanish omelette than like a feller that would order Hamburger steak."
For the first time the man turned about, flung his arm over his chair-back, and looked up at Dickie. In fact, he stared. His thin lips, enclosed in an ill-tempered parenthesis of double lines, twisted themselves slightly.
"I'll be derned!" he said. "But, look here, my man, I didn't order
Hamburger steak; I ordered chicken."
Dickie deliberately smoothed down the cowlick on his head. He wore his look of a seven-year-old with which he was wont to face the extremity of Sylvester's exasperation.
"I reckon I clean forgot your order, sir," he said. "I figured out that you wouldn't be caring what was on your plate. This heat," he added, "sure puts a blinder on a feller's memory."
The man laughed shortly. "It's all right," he said. "This'll go down."
He ate in silence. Then he glanced up again. "What are you waiting for, anyway?"
Dickie flushed faintly. "I was sort of wishful to see how it would go down."
"Oh, I don't mean that kind of waiting. I mean—why are you a waiter in this—hash-hole?"