His companions
and himself were as trees walking, and when they had taken their
seats at a table in the men's restaurant of a hotel where he had
never been, he was not roused from his rapturous apathy even by
the conduct of probably the most remarkable maitre d'hotel in
the world.
"You don't git 'em!" said this personage briefly, when Potter
had ordered chops and "oeufs a la creole" and lettuce salad,
from a card. "You got to eat partridge and asparagus tips
salad!"
And he went away, leaving the terrible Potter resigned and
unrebellious.
The partridge was undeniable when it came; a stuffed man would
have eaten it. But Talbot Potter and his two guests did little
more than nibble it; they neither ate nor talked, and yet they
looked anything but unhappy. Detached from their surroundings,
as they sat over their coffee, they might have been taken to be
three poetic gentlemen listening to a serenade.
After a long and apparently satisfactory silence, Talbot Potter
looked at his watch, but not, as it proved, to see if it was
time to return to the theatre, his ensuing action being to send
a messenger to procure a fresh orchid to take the place of the
one that had begun to droop a little from his buttonhold.
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