Women are unjust in these matters. When a man comes into a night club of which he is not a member and asks for a table he feels that he is butting in, and naturally is not at his best. This is not helplessness, it is fineness of soul. But women won't see that.
"I'm awfully sorry."
The head waiter had returned, and was either doing sums or drawing caricatures on a large pad chained to a desk. He seemed so much the artist absorbed in his work that John would not have dreamed of venturing to interrupt him. Pat had no such delicacy.
"I want a table, please," said Pat.
"Madame is a member?"
"A table, please. A nice, large one. I like plenty of room. And when Mr. Carmody arrives tell him that Miss Wyvern and Mr. Carroll are inside."
"Very good, madame. Certainly, madame. This way, madame."
Just as simple as that! John, making a physically impressive but spiritually negligible tail to the procession, wondered, as he crossed the polished floor, how Pat did these things. It was not as if she were one of those massive, imperious women whom you would naturally expect to quell head waiters with a glance. She was no Cleopatra, no Catherine of Russia—just a slim, slight girl with a tip-tilted nose. And yet she had taken this formidable magnifico in her stride, kicked him lightly in the face, and passed on. He sat down, thrilled with a worshipping admiration.
Pat, as always happened after one of her little spurts of irritability, was apologetic.
"Sorry I bit your head off, Johnnie," she said. "It was a shame, after you had come all this way just to see an old friend. But it makes me so angry when you're meek and sheep-y and let people trample on you. Still I suppose it's not your fault." She smiled across at him. "You always were a slow, good-natured old thing, weren't you, like one of those big dogs that come and bump their head on your lap and snuffle. Poor old Johnnie!"