I am
content to leave it at purlieus. The driver, as it seemed to me, had
as foggy a notion as I of what, without infringing Messrs. Swan and
Edgar's _lingerie_ copyright, we'll call the 'Catalafina's'
whereabouts. Farrell spent two-thirds of the passage with his head
out of window. I don't mean to convey that he was seasick: and he
certainly wasn't drunk, or approaching it. He kept his head out to
shout directions. He was pardonably excited--maybe a bit nervous in
a channel that seemed to be buoyed all the way with pawnbrokers'
signs. But he brought us through. We alighted at the entrance of
the 'Catalafina'; Farrell paid the driver, and I advised him to find
his way back before daylight overtook him.
"I will not attempt to describe the interior of the 'Catalafina.'
Farrell saved me that trouble on the threshold. 'Twenty years or
so,' he said, pausing and inhaling garlic, 'often makes a difference
in these places. One mustn't expect this to be quite what it used to
be." . . . Well, I hadn't, of course, and I dare say it wasn't.
It had sand on the floor, and spittoons.
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