I dined well--or, rather, I might have enjoyed my dinner if Mr.
Halyard had been eliminated; and the feast consisted exclusively of a
joint of beef, the pretty nurse, and myself. She was exceedingly
attractive--with a disturbing fashion of lowering her head and raising
her dark eyes when spoken to.
As for Halyard, he was unspeakable, bundled up in his snuffy shawls,
and making uncouth noises over his gruel. But it is only just to say
that his table was worth sitting down to and his wine was sound as a
bell.
"Yah!" he snapped, "I'm sick of this cursed soup--and I'll trouble you
to fill my glass--"
"It is dangerous for you to touch claret," said the pretty nurse.
"I might as well die at dinner as anywhere," he observed.
"Certainly," said I, cheerfully passing the decanter, but he did not
appear overpleased with the attention.
"I can't smoke, either," he snarled, hitching the shawls around until
he looked like Richard the Third.
However, he was good enough to shove a box of cigars at me, and I took
one and stood up, as the pretty nurse slipped past and vanished into
the little parlor beyond.
We sat there for a while without speaking. He picked irritably at the
bread-crumbs on the cloth, never glancing in my direction; and I,
tired from my long foot-tour, lay back in my chair, silently
appreciating one of the best cigars I ever smoked.
"Well," he rasped out at length, "what do you think of my auks--and my
veracity?"