“But I didn’t know it myself,” said David. “Of course, I could have telephoned, but—”
“Never do that!” exclaimed Elizabeth impetuously; and I saw the look of fear upon her face again.
A bell sounded, the shaft door clicked open, and a tray lay in the orifice. Elizabeth carried it to the table, and a well-cooked meal was smoking before us.
“You may be surprised to know that this tea was made two miles away,” said David, “in the district sub-kitchen. It came to us at seventy miles an hour. Before we had the gyroscopic attachments, fluids were occasionally spilled.”
“And how do you clean the apartment?” I asked Elizabeth.
“In the old-fashioned way,” she answered, smiling. “I am an expert with the solar vacuum and duster.”
“I believe our friend is accustomed to the existence of a servant class,” said David, laughing at me.
But there was a subdued melancholy about him, as well as about Elizabeth. The sense of it, and the constraint it bred, grew on me momentarily. After dinner the dishes were sent down the shaft, and David handed me a typical twentieth-century cigar.
“In a sense, this is one of our compromises,” he said, as we sat down in the adjoining room. “Doctor Sanson wants to forbid the use of nicotine as impairing the productive efficiency of the race. But the Council thinks the narcotic has a restraining influence—”
He broke off as Elizabeth looked at him rather significantly.