"Yes, thank you."
"May I take the next chair and have breakfast with you?"
"Yes, please."
He seated himself. She said nothing, ate nothing. Suddenly it occurred to him that in her quaint way she was waiting for his breakfast to appear before beginning her own.
"You are not waiting for me, are you?" he asked. "Don't do that; everything will be cold."
With an odd air of old-fashioned obedience, which always seemed to make her more youthful to him, she began her breakfast.
"We'll be docking presently," he remarked, glancing out into the fog and thinly falling rain.
"Yes."
He lay back in his chair, not caring for her monosyllables, but good-humouredly receptive in case she encouraged conversation.
Neither the freshness of her clothes nor of her skin seemed to have suffered from the discomforts of the night; her hair was lustrous and crisply in order. From her hat-crown to the palms of her gloves rolled back over her wrists, she seemed to have just left the hands of a clever maid, so fresh, sweet, fragrant and immaculate she appeared to him, and he became uncomfortably conscious of his knickerbockers and badly wrinkled tweeds.