his chivalry as a wedge to open an acquaintance never occurred to him—but his whiskers did occur to him. Hastily he backed into his stateroom and closed the door; presently he rose and surveyed himself critically in the small mirror over the washstand.
“No, Johnny,” he murmured, “we can't go into the diner now. We're too blamed disreputable. We were bad enough before that big swine hung the shanty on our right eye, but whatever our physical and personal feelings, far be it from us to parade our iridescent orb in public. Besides, one look at that queen is enough to do us for the remainder of our natural life, and a second look, minus a proper introduction, would only drive us into a suicide's grave. That's a fair sample of our luck, Johnny. It rains duck soup—and we're there like a Chinaman—with chopsticks; and on the only day in the history of the human race, here I am with a marvellous black eye, a dislocated thumb, four skinned knuckles, and a grouch, while otherwise looking like a cross between Rip Van Winkle and a hired man.” He sighed, rang for the porter and told him to send a waiter for his order, since he would fain break his fast in the privacy of his stateroom. And when the waiter came for the order, such was Mr. Webster's mental perturbation that ham and eggs were furthest from his thoughts. He ordered a steak with French fried potatoes.
CHAPTER II
JOHN STUART WEBSTER passed a restless night. Sleep came to him in hourly installments, from which he would rouse to ask himself whether it was worth while to continue to go through the motions of living, or alight at the next station, seek a lonely and unfrequented spot and there surrender to outrageous fortune. He had lived every moment of his life; fair fortune and ill had been his portion so often that he had long since ceased to care which took precedence over the other; to quote Mr. Kipling, he had schooled himself to “treat those two impostors both the same”—not a very difficult task, if one be granted a breathing spell between the arrival of each impostor! Hitherto, in Webster's experience, there had always been a decent interval between the two—say a day, a week, a month or more; whereas in the present instance, two minutes had sufficed to make the journey from a heaven of contentment to the dungeons of despair.
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