"And why," I asked, "do you laugh at serious work?"
"Why, yer bloomin' life 'ull go by like a wind," he said, "and yer 'ole silly civilization 'ull be tidied up in a few centuries."
Then he fell to laughing again and this time audibly; and, laughing still, faded back through the wall again and into the eternity from which he had come.
THE GUEST
A young man came into an ornate restaurant at eight o'clock in
London.
He was alone, but two places had been laid at the table which was reserved for him. He had chosen the dinner very carefully, by letter a week before.
A waiter asked him about the other guest.
"You probably won't see him till the coffee comes," the young man told him; so he was served alone.
Those at adjacent tables might have noticed the young man continually addressing the empty chair and carrying on a monologue with it throughout his elaborate dinner.
"I think you knew my father," he said to it over the soup.