They had arrived some time ago at the point where Transfer Street crosses the pride of the city, the thoroughfare called Labour Street. A stream of vehicles passing transversely had held them up, but when at last the policeman raised a hand in potent arrest, the two youths crossed and found themselves facing the Crystal Café.
"This looks rather the kind of place!" exclaimed Strauss. "What's it like?"
The inside of the gilded eating-houses that threw the glare of their lamps and the smells of their cooking into Labour Street had hitherto occupied Philip's attention for a curious moment at most. His ignorance seemed now to be a grave lacuna in his education. "Sorry, not the vaguest idea!" he protested ruefully.
"Hold, I hear music! Say, boy, I guess we'll try the dandy li'l place right now!" declared Strauss, with an artful introduction of the appropriate accent. They entered, and the host ordered a delicate meal with some grandeur. Philip found the marble-faced walls a little ugly, but distinctly rich and impressive. The gentlemen in the orchestra he found also ugly, also distinctly rich and impressive; particularly the florid gentleman at the piano, whose moustache wandered so persistently into his mouth that he gave up the attempt to blow it away and endeavoured to reconcile himself to the taste. He was so very inflated, would the sudden puncture of a pin dismiss him into thin air? Anyhow the marble seemed solid enough. Philip surreptitiously passed his hand along the marble behind him to assure himself. His head was in a whirl. His friendship with the garrulous, glittering youth (Strauss made dainty play with his fingers to display two quite admirable rings, and there was a gleam of gold cuff-links from shirt-sleeves which he seemed deliberately to have pulled down an excessive inch), his friendship with Strauss had developed at so kinematic a speed that he was half afraid he could hear himself panting over the chocolate éclairs.
At least he had breath enough to tender such information as he possessed concerning Jewish boarding-houses, the people who might be considered the "swells" of the community, which synagogues would provide the happiest hunting-grounds for chase not strictly specified, and a number of kindred affairs. He discovered that he was usefuller than he had anticipated. He said to himself humorously that he was blossoming into a man of the world. Much fascinating conversation, or more strictly, monologue, followed, on matters less professional. It was laid down as axiomatic that every young fellow under eighteen, worth the least grain of his salt, knew what's what—a phrase Philip had already encountered, but here, obviously, endowed with a more intimate meaning than hitherto. When Strauss requested him to choose between the Turkish and Russian compartments of his cigarette case, he felt it behoved him to patronize the Turkish, for a recondite technical reason which at once did high credit to his own imagination and satisfactorily impressed his friend. A number of entertaining adventures were narrated by Strauss, illustrative of the nature of what's what. There was Flo in the punt at Richmond. Oh, of course, a married woman, she was! But then her own husband had introduced her with a wink which meant merely, "Go ahead, Wilfrid, old duck, go ahead!" And there was silly old Bobby—insisted on wearing a wedding ring at Bournemouth, and Jimmy Gluckstein had spread the news that he'd settled down in decent matrimony. Did a chap no end of harm, that sort of thing! And, 'struth, yes, ha, ha, ha! that ducky little French bit, Flory! Her mother, moaning with toothache, had interrupted them at about two in the morning. There'd only just been time to slip under the bed. And it was March, too, March in Paris! From two till seven in the morning, mark you! Grr-grr! ... From Strauss's enjoyment of the tale one could not help deducing that he felt, at least after this lapse of time; that his part in the episode was indisputably the most enjoyable, even the most dignified.... And oh, yes, talking about four-posters ... there was Fanny ... you should have heard ... another cigarette? ... and when her real boy came ... camisole ... about time we went ... Oh no, no, don't mention it!..."
Yes, of course, Philip would be delighted to accompany Strauss to Mrs. Levinsky's, in Blenheim Road. But wait a moment, why not try Mrs. Lipson's, in Brownel Gap, next door to Halick, the dentist? It was quite near to both the Reformed and the Portuguese Synagogues, a useful base for operations.... And it was at Mrs. Lipson's that Philip saw Strauss duly installed—after a dalliance in a bar parlour where Strauss drank a cocktail to fortify himself against the shock of his resumption into his tribe's bosom, and where Philip, school cap stuffed mournfully into trousers pocket, could not but accept a port and lemon for "old time's sake."
"You'll be certain, Philip, to call round for me to-morrow about twelve!" exhorted Strauss, as Philip at last left him that evening. "What's that, school? Oh, bother it, I forgot! Good old Philip, sitting at a nice desk doing multiplication sums and putting his hand up with the answer!"
"Look here!" Philip objected rawly. Yet it was difficult to shake off the temptation to believe that from more than one point of view, this, after all, was a fair epitome of scholastic labour. "School's all right! There's a good deal in it beyond books and things!" he reflected with some wistfulness. But the basement playground-restaurant compared rather dingily, he was uncomfortably conscious, with the blare and marble of the Crystal Café.
"Well, you're outgrowing it pretty quickly, I can say that for you! What do you say to coming round to-morrow evening? You could take me the round of the district ... and what about a music hall to wind up with?"
"I can't let you do all this for me! It wouldn't be playing the game! I mean we've only met to-day and I don't know anything about the business side of things, and you see I don't get much money myself. I just give lessons to a master-tailor...."