“Well, I haven't engaged that valet as yet,” Webster began, but the other interrupted cheerfully: “What's the odds? He's going to miss the boat, anyhow. All I require is a name.”
“That ought to be a simple request to comply with. Let me see! If I had a valet I think I should want him to be called Andrew or Martin.”
“I read a book once, Mr. Webster, and the valet in that book was called Andrew Bowers.”
“Bowers is a fine old English name. Let us seek no further. Andrew Bowers it is.”
“Thank you. All you have to do then is to remember to sign the name, Andrew Bowers, to one ticket. Don't forget your valet's name now, and ball everything up,” and the clerk hung up, laughing.
Half an hour later a boy from the steamship office arrived with the tickets, collected for them, and departed, leaving John Stuart Webster singularly pleased with himself and at peace with the entire world.
CHAPTER XI
A “LARGE” dinner at Antoine's that night (Webster had heard of Antoine's dinners, both large and small and was resolved not to leave New Orleans until he had visited the famous restaurant) and a stroll through the picturesque old French quarter and along the levee next day, helped to render his enforced stay in New Orleans delightful, interesting, and instructive. Webster was one of those distinctful individual types to whom a chamber of horrors would be productive of more enjoyment than the usual round of “points of interest.” Experience had demonstrated to him that such points usually are uninteresting and wearing on the imagination, for the reason that the tourist trappers and proprietors of automobile 'buses, who map out the tours have no imagination themselves. Consequently, Webster preferred to prowl around quietly on little tours of discovery, personally conducted by himself. The search for obscure restaurants of unquestioned merit was with him almost a mania, and since in quaint New Orleans the food and drink specialist finds his highest heaven, no cloud marked the serenity of his delightful peregrinations.