"You see?"
"Oh yes, I see you."
"Anything doin'?"
"Nothing doin'," said Al, stroking his corn-colored mustache with that languid finality against which there was no appeal. "Nothin' at all."
"He has had his chance," said Bedelle to himself in gloomy pride. Yes, Al had had his chance, that one chance that comes unwittingly to every man—Al who might have toured the world with him as his majordomo, or his confidential valet.
"Hello, Dennis!" he said, perceiving back of an enormous chocolate éclair the human anaconda famine and opportunity had at this moment made of Finnegan, the discoverer of the double adjective.
"Hello yourself!"
"How's the bank account?" said Skippy lightly, for etiquette forbade any reference to the half-dollar parted with on the Wednesday before.
"Why, bless my immortal soul, you old rambunctious, skipping Zockarooster, are you setting them up?" said Brian de Boru, pretending to misunderstand.
Skippy disdained a reply. Al, after all, was but running true to form, but this was the basest ingratitude,—the serpent's tooth in the fair landscape of friendship.