“I’m not late, am I?” said Sam anxiously.
“Then come along. Golly, what a corking day!”
He shepherded her solicitously into the grill-room and made for a table by the large window that looks out onto the court. A cloakroom waiter, who had padded silently upon their trail, collected his hat and stick and withdrew with the air of a leopard that has made a good kill.
“Nice-looking chap,” said Sam, following him with an appreciative eye.
“You seem to be approving of everything and everybody this morning.”
“I am. This is the maddest, merriest day of all the glad New Year, and you can quote me as saying so. Now then, what is it to be?”
Having finished his ordering, a task which he approached on a lavish scale, Sam leaned forward and gazed fondly at his guest.
“Gosh!” he said rapturously. “I never thought, when I was sitting in that fishing hut staring at your photograph, that only a month or two later I’d be having lunch with you at the Savoy.”
Kay was a little startled. Her brief acquaintance with him had taught her that Sam was a man of what might be called direct methods, but she had never expected that he would be quite so direct as this. In his lexicon there appeared to be no such words as “reticence” and “finesse.”