“Don’t you both feel as if you could eat something? There is an excellent restaurant across the street, and I should be glad to have you eat dinner with me.”
“Yes, I’m hungry,” Mr. Silburn answered. “I haven’t eaten anything since—no, I’m getting mixed again. The last thing I ate was a bit of raw lobster, but I can’t remember where it was.”
When they were seated at the table, the patient gave ample proof that his loss of memory did not affect his appetite.
“That lobster you spoke of,” the consul said, hoping to revive the subject, “was that on the island?”
“It seems to me it was on an island somewhere,” Mr. Silburn answered. “Not much of an island, as far as I can remember; just a little place, with only a few people on it. I’m glad you spoke of it; though it seems to put me in mind of something, though I can’t think what it is. Give me some more of the roast beef, please.”
When Kit and his father retired to their room in the hospital early that evening, a room evidently kept for some of the staff rather than for patients, Kit drew one of the big chairs up to the table, and seating his father in it, proceeded to open the small package that Vieve had entrusted to him.
“You see Vieve hasn’t forgotten you, father,” he said. “She thought you must miss your slippers, so she made me bring them over to you. And here’s something else. Do you remember this?”
He reached into one of the slippers and took out his father’s pocket knife that the sailor from the Flower City had given him.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for that knife,” Mr. Silburn said, taking it as coolly as if he had mislaid it somewhere the day before. “Where did you find it, Kit?”
“I got it from the man you handed it to, to cut away one of the Flower City’s boats with, sir,” Kit answered. “Do you remember that?”