“Yes, he does—don’t you like them?”
“Madam,” replied the assistant-clerk, “professionally I cannot say that I do. Just fancy, ladies,” he continued, turning to the others, “a comical clerk, who ever heard of such a thing?”
He uttered these words with a serio-comic air, so irresistibly droll, that the ladies fairly shook with suppressed laughter.
“Oh—do hold your tongue, Mr. Thomasz!” Laurentia at length managed to say, “you see how savagely Mr. Greveland is glaring at you.”
“What a time that mumbler takes to be sure!” said a voice almost aloud in the centre of the pandoppo.
“If one might only light a cigar to while away the time,” said another.
“Or get a glass of bitters!”
“I was asking an oppasser just now to fetch me a glass of beer—my throat is as dry as a lime-kiln,” said another voice in an audible whisper.
“Well—and did you get it?”
“Don’t I wish I may get it? ‘Not allowed, sir,’ was all I could get out of that canary-bird, who looked as black as a three days’ west monsoon.”