ill referred to him as a waiter person--sat them down
near the front at a small, round table whose enamel top was decorated
with two slopped glasses and a bottle one-third filled with wine gone
stale. At least the stuff looked and smelled like wine--like a poor
quality of champagne.

"Ugh!" said Mr. Murrill, tasting the air. "Somebody evidently couldn't
wait until lunch time before he started his tippling. And I didn't
suspect either that this place might be a bootlegging place in disguise.
Well, since prohibition came in it's hard to find a resort shop anywhere
where you can't buy bad liquor--if only you go about it the right way."

When the waiter person brought their order he bade him remove the bottle
and the slopped glasses, and the waiter person obliged, but so sulkily
and with such slowness of movement that Mr. Murrill was moved to speak
to him rather sharply. Even so, the sullen functionary took his time
about the thing. Nor did the orangeade prove particularly appetizing.
Mr. Murrill barely tasted his.

"Shall we clear out?" he asked, making a fastidious little grimace.

At the door, on the way out, he made excuses.

"Sorry I suggested coming into this place," he said, sinking his voice.
"Either it is a shop which has gone off badly or its merits have been
overadvertised by its loving friends. To me the whole atmosphere of the
establishment seemed rather dubious, eh, what? Well, what shall we do
next? I see a few bathers down below. Shall we go down on the beach and
find a place to sit and watch them for a bit?"

They went; and he found a bench in a quiet place under the shorings of
the boardwalk close up alongside one of the lesser bathing pavilions,
and they sat there, and he talked and she listened. The man had an
endless fund of gossip about amusing and noted people; most of them, it
would seem, were his intimates. Telling one or two incidents in which
these distinguished friends had figured, he felt it expedient to sink
his voice to a discreet undertone. There was plainly apparent a delicacy
of feeling in this; one did not shout out the names of such persons for
any curious passer-by to hear. It developed that there was one specially
close bond between him and the members of General Dunlap's family, an
attachment partly based upon old acquaintance and partly upon the fact
that the Dunlaps thought he once upon a time had saved the life of the
general's youngest daughter, Millicent.

"Really, though,