"It's all right, old fruit, don't hurry away," said boots affably. "Awfully sorry, and all that. Quite forgot it was a public room, don't you know."
The chambermaid giggled once more and bolted, straightening her cap as she went.
"You don't mind, do you?" continued boots, making a clumsy show of trimming the lamp. "Warm is the greeting when seas have rolled between us. Perhaps not quite that, but you see the idea, eh?"
He would doubtless have said more, being evidently of a cheery nature, had not the waitress of the afternoon appeared in the doorway, her face as frozen as a mask of ice.
"Bob—kennel!" she said sharply, and held the door wide.
The cheeriness vanished and the boots followed it through the open doorway.
"I trust you will excuse him, sir," said the waitress deferentially. "He is just a little deranged, but quite harmless. We employ him out of charity, sir."
I may have been mistaken, but a sound uncommonly like the chambermaid's giggle came to me from the passage without.
The sound of a car stopping outside the hotel drew me to the window as the waitress left me, and I was in time to see an old gentleman with a long white beard step from the interior of a Daimler landaulette, the door of which was held open by a dignified chauffeur, whose attire seemed to consist mainly of brass buttons.
A consultation evidently took place in the smoking-room or bar between this patriarch and the proprietor, and then I heard agitated voices in the passage without.