“So my dinner is ready _at last_,” exclaimed Bingham pettishly. A good digestion had waited two mortal hours on appetite.
“Yes, sir, _of_ course, sir!” replied the waiter. “A little derangement of the cabbage, sir, lost a few minutes, but” cheerily “we’re safe and snug now anyway. There’s darling chickens, sir! Look at the lovely bacon, sir! Survey the proportions of the cabbage, sir!” And rubbing his napkin across his perspiring brow, he gazed at the viands, and from the viands to the guest, in alternate glances of admiration and respect.
“Yes, sir, _of_ course, sir—two of them; likewise a shay and a covered car.”
“No, sir; we get the wine from Dublin in hampers.”
Percy Bingham forgot that he was not in an English inn where the waiters discuss vintages and prescribe peculiar brands of dry champagne.
“We’ve port wine, sir, and sherry wine, sir, and claret wine, sir, and Mayderial wine, sir,” was the reply, run off with the utmost rapidity.
In a few minutes the gory-headed factotum returned with the wine, and, uncorking it with a tremendous flourish of arm, napkin, head, and hair, deliberately poured out an overflowing glassful of the amber-colored fluid, and drained it off.
“What the mischief do you mean?” demanded the young officer angrily. “I wanted for to make _certain_ that your honner was getting the right wine.” And placing the bottle at Percy Bingham’s elbow, he somewhat hastily withdrew.
The gallant warrior enjoyed his chicken and bacon and “wisp of cabbage.” The waiter had made his peace by concocting with cunning hand a tumbler of whiskey-punch, hot, strong, and sweet, which Bingham proceeded to sip between the whiffs of a Sabean-odored Lopez. Who fails to build castles upon the creamy smoke, as it fades imperceptibly into space, wafting upwards aspirations, wishes, hopes, dreams—rare and roseate shadows, begotten of bright-eyed fancy? Not Percy Bingham, surely, seated by the open casement, lulled by the murmuring plash of the toying tide, gazing forth into the silent sadness of the gray-hooded summer night. He had lived a butterfly life, and his thoughts were of gay parterres and brilliant flowers. “Of hair-breadth 'scapes i’ the imminent deadly breach” he knew nothing. His game of war was played in the boudoir and drawing-room; his castle was built in May Fair, his châtelaine an ideal. The chain of his meditation was somewhat rudely snapped asunder by an animated dialogue which had commenced in some remote region of the hotel, and which was now being continued beneath the window whereat he reclined. The waiter had evidently been engaged in expostulating with Lanty Kerrigan.