“Yes? There’s Claude Bates over at that table.”
The effect of these words on her companion was so electrical that it seemed to Kay that she had at last discovered a theme which would take his mind off other and disconcerting topics. Sam turned a dull crimson; his eyes hardened; his jaw protruded; he struggled for speech.
“The tick! The blister! The blighter! The worm! The pest! The hound! The bounder!” he cried. “Where is he?”
He twisted round in his chair, and having located the companion of his boyhood, gazed at the back of his ridged and shining head with a malevolent scowl. Then, taking up a hard and nobby roll, he poised it lovingly.
“You mustn’t.”
“Just this one!”
“No!”
“Very well.”
Sam threw down the roll with a gesture of resignation. Kay looked at him in alarm.
“I had no idea you disliked him so much as that!”