"Then you didn't really think I should turn up?" he asked, glancing up from the bill of fare I had handed him.
"Not wanting to eat two dinners in one night, I forbore to order anything until I'd seen whether you were alive."
His deep-set black eyes became charged with laughter.
"Alive!" he exclaimed. "I'm not twenty-seven yet, George, and I've done all my work in life. I've made all kinds of money. I could eat two dinners every night if I wanted to. I can start seriously now; I'm the equal of you or Jim or anyone. Not literally, of course; he'd call me a pauper. It's a matter of degree, but I shall never again be handicapped by not having money." The waiter arrived with the cocktails: O'Rane raised his glass and bowed: "Say you're glad to see me, old man."
"I don't think the point was ever seriously challenged," I said. "Continued prosperity! I don't use the word luck with you."
As we sat down to dinner his eyes were brimming with tears.
Some day I should like to write a series of books about O'Rane. I should not mind if they were little read, I should not mind if they were read and disbelieved; they will never come from his pen, and, as he confided more in me than in anyone else, I feel a responsibility to the half-dozen of his friends who may survive the war. Midnight was long past before the tale of his adventures was done—the selected tale of such adventures as he thought would interest me.
"And now?" I asked, as the smoking-room waiter came in and looked pointedly at the clock.
"Ah God! one sniff of England—
To greet our flesh and blood—