however, Mr. Carmyle's manner changed for the worse. He
lost his amiability. He was evidently a man who took his meals seriously
and believed in treating waiters with severity. He shuddered austerely
at a stain on the table-cloth, and then concentrated himself frowningly
on the bill of fare. Sally, meanwhile, was establishing cosy relations
with the much too friendly waiter, a cheerful old man who from the start
seemed to have made up his mind to regard her as a favourite daughter.
The waiter talked no English and Sally no French, but they were getting
along capitally, when Mr. Carmyle, who had been irritably waving aside
the servitor's light-hearted advice--at the Hotel Splendide the waiters
never bent over you and breathed cordial suggestions down the side of
your face--gave his order crisply in the Anglo-Gallic dialect of the
travelling Briton. The waiter remarked, "Boum!" in a pleased sort of
way, and vanished.

"Nice old man!" said Sally.

"Infernally familiar!" said Mr. Carmyle.

Sally perceived that on the topic of the waiter she and her host did not
see eye to eye and that little pleasure or profit could be derived from
any discussion centring about him. She changed the subject. She was not
liking Mr. Carmyle quite so much as she had done a few minutes ago, but
it was courteous of him to give her dinner, and she tried to like him as
much as she could.

"By the way," she said, "my name is Nicholas. I always think it's a good
thing to start with names, don't you?"

"Mine..."

"Oh, I know yours. Ginger--Mr. Kemp told me."

Mr. Carmyle, who since the waiter's departure, had been thawing,
stiffened again at the mention of Ginger.

"Indeed?" he said, coldly. "Apparently you got intimate."

Sally did not like his tone. He seemed to be criticizing her, and she
resented criticism from a stranger. Her eyes opened wide and she looked
dangerously across the table.

"Why 'apparently'? I told you that we had got intimate, and I explained
how. You can't stay shut up in an elevator half the night with anybody
without getting to know him. I found Mr. Kemp very pleasant."

"Really?"

"And very interesting."

Mr. Carmyle raised his eyebrows.

"Would you call him interesting?"

"I did call him interesting." Sally was beginning to feel the
exhilaration of battle. Men usually made themselves extremely agreeable
to her, and she reacted belligerently under the stiff unfriendliness
which had come over her companion i