Her spirit sank a little at the sight of the slim-waisted waitresses in
black, with bewitching mob-caps on their haughty heads, who were moving
disdainfully between the tables. "Not f'r another hour," one of them
dropped to Harney in passing; and he stood doubtfully glancing about
him.
"Oh, well, we can't stay sweltering here," he decided; "let's try
somewhere else--" and with a sense of relief Charity followed him from
that scene of inhospitable splendour.
That "somewhere else" turned out--after more hot tramping, and several
failures--to be, of all things, a little open-air place in a back street
that called itself a French restaurant, and consisted in two or three
rickety tables under a scarlet-runner, between a patch of zinnias
and petunias and a big elm bending over from the next yard. Here they
lunched on queerly flavoured things, while Harney, leaning back in a
crippled rocking-chair, smoked cigarettes between the courses and poured
into Charity's glass a pale yellow wine which he said was the very same
one drank in just such jolly places in France.
Pages:
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145