her run, she was prettier than any girl he had yet met, he contrived to smile.
“Not at all,” he said in answer to her question, though it was far from the truth. His left big toe was aching confoundedly. Even a girl with a foot as small as Sally's can make her presence felt on a man's toe if the scrum-half who is handling her aims well and uses plenty of vigour.
“If you don't mind,” said Sally, sitting down, “I think I'll breathe a little.”
She breathed. The train sped on.
“Quite a close thing,” said Bruce Carmyle, affably. The pain in his toe was diminishing. “You nearly missed it.”
“Yes. It was lucky Mr. Kemp was with me. He throws very straight, doesn't he.”
“Tell me,” said Carmyle, “how do you come to know my Cousin? On the beach yesterday morning...”
“Oh, we didn't know each other then. But we were staying at the same hotel, and we spent an hour or so shut up in an elevator together. That was when we really got acquainted.”
A waiter entered the compartment, announcing in unexpected English that dinner was served in the restaurant car. “Would you care for dinner?”
“I'm starving,” said Sally.
She reproved herself, as they made their way down the corridor, for being so foolish as to judge anyone by his appearance. This man was perfectly pleasant in spite of his grim exterior. She had decided by the time they had seated themselves at the table she liked him.
At the table, however, Mr. Carmyle's manner changed for the worse. He lost his amiability. He was evidently a man who took his meals seriously and believed in treating waiters with severity. He shuddered austerely at a stain on the table-cloth, and then concentrated himself frowningly on the bill of fare. Sally, meanwhile, was establishing cosy relations with the much too friendly waiter, a cheerful old man who from the start seemed to have made up his mind to regard her as a favourite daughter. The waiter talked no English and Sally no French, but they were getting along capitally, when Mr. Carmyle, who had been irritably waving aside the servitor's light-hearted advice—at the
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