"You know, Bel," she observed in the dispassionate accents of the friend who wouldn't for worlds mention it, only it's for your own good—"you really ought to be more careful about your drinking. You barely escaped being pretty awful at times, last night."
An indictment the more unkind because a cloudy memory refused to affirm or deny its justice. Bellamy began to repent his fidelity to the six o'clock rule.
"Fancy your forgetting we'd agreed to meet here instead of at the Ritz. That ought to show you how lit you were."
"Sorry——"
"That's all very well: but suppose you hadn't had sense enough to call up this morning, suppose I had come here to meet you, just as we'd arranged, and had to go home after waiting around for hours like some shop-girl forgotten on a street corner——"
"Poetic justice, if you ask me—something to offset some of the hours you've kept me fidgeting, wondering if you meant to show up at all."
Injudiciously, Bellamy added a smile to the retort, by way of offsetting its justice.
"So it amuses you to think of making an exhibition of me in a place like this!"
"Oh, I don't know." Bellamy surveyed the restaurant without bias. "Not a bad little hole for people in our position."
The melon, inedible and uneaten, was removed, soup in cups was substituted.