“Not a bit of it. You allowed a nice lot of sand to run out of your glass. But isn’t that a sight, Bertie? There are masts—a forest. There are docks—the docks of the world.”
“What docks we’ll have in twenty years at New York!”
“You don’t believe in anything outside of the stars and stripes.”
“Not much,” with a laugh; adding, “Shall we make any stay in Liverpool?”
Mr. Kirwan consults his watch.
“We shall only just catch that train due in London at 6.40. The Dover express starts at 7.35. This will decant us in Paris to-morrow morning at six. We shall have nice time for a big wash, a big breakfast, and then for the opening of the Exhibition.”
“This is close shaving.”
“That’s my principle. Narrow margins. They pay best all round.”
Mr. Kirwan’s calculations, based Upon professional experience, proved correct. A vague soup and an ill-dressed cutlet at Charing Cross, a thick omelette and a thin wine at Amiens, did duty for refreshment. In the sheen of dazzling early sunlight Bertram Martin first saw Paris, the bright, the joyous, the glittering, the beautiful. A dream of his life was about to be realized.
Mr. Kirwan having telegraphed for apartments, he with our hero was “skied” at the Hôtel du Louvre, and after a breakfast which would have done honor to a navvy had been disposed of by Bertie, who in New York would flirt with a slice of toast and coquette with a fresh egg, cigars were lighted and the two gentlemen set forth in the direction of the Champ de Mars.