be pleased. The stout boy said nothing. He had finished his
fish-pie, and was now attacking jam roll with a sort of morose
resolution.

"There's certain to be a boat," said the girl. "There always is.
You've got to say that for England--it's an easy place to get back
to America from." She paused. "What I can't understand is how,
after having been in America and knowing what it was like, Jimmy
Crocker could stand living . . ."

The waiter had come to Jimmy's side, bearing cheese; but Jimmy
looked at it with dislike and shook his head in silent negation.
He was about to depart from this place. His capacity for
absorbing home-truths about himself was exhausted. He placed a
noiseless sovereign on the table, caught the waiter's eye,
registered renunciation, and departed soft-footed down the aisle.
The waiter, a man who had never been able to bring himself to
believe in miracles, revised the views of a life-time. He looked
at the sovereign, then at Jimmy, then at the sovereign again.
Then he took up the coin and bit it furtively.

A few minutes later, a hat-check boy, untipped for the first time
in his predatory career, was staring at Jimmy with equal
intensity, but with far different feelings. Speechless concern
was limned on his young face.

The commissionaire at the Piccadilly entrance of the restaurant
touched his hat ingratiatingly, with the smug confidence of a man
who is accustomed to getting sixpence a time for doing it.