Chapter 29
"I had no objection," Norgate remarked, a few hours later, "to lunching with you at the Berkeley--very good lunch it was, too--but to dine with you in Soho certainly seems to require some explanation. Why do we do it? Is it my punishment for a day's inactivity, because if so, I beg to protest. I did my best with Hebblethwaite this morning, and it was only because there was nothing for him to tell me that I heard nothing." Selingman spread himself out at the little table and talked in voluble German to the portly head-waiter in greasy clothes. Then he turned to his guest. "My young friend," he enjoined, "you should cultivate a spirit of optimism. I grant you that the place is small and close, that the odour of other people's dinners is repellent, that this cloth, perhaps, is not so clean
- Writer
