“There’s something in that.”

“Absolutely!  Well,” said Archie, judicially, “this would appear to be, as it were, the maddest, merriest day in all the glad New Year, yes, no?”

Bill drew a deep breath.

“You bet your sorrowful existence it is!” he said.  “I’d like to do something to celebrate it.”

“The right spirit!” said Archie.  “Absolutely the right spirit!  Begin by paying for my lunch!”

CHAPTER XX

THE-SAUSAGE-CHAPPIE-CLICKS

Rendered restless by relief, Bill Brewster did not linger long at the luncheon-table.  Shortly after Reggie van Tuyl had retired, he got up and announced his intention of going for a bit of a walk to calm his excited mind.  Archie dismissed him with a courteous wave of the hand; and, beckoning to the Sausage Chappie, who in his role of waiter was hovering near, requested him to bring the best cigar the hotel could supply.  The padded seat in which he sat was comfortable; he had no engagements; and it seemed to him that a pleasant half-hour could be passed in smoking dreamily and watching his fellow-men eat.

The grill-room had filled up.  The Sausage Chappie, having brought Archie his cigar, was attending to a table close by, at which a woman with a small boy in a sailor suit had seated themselves.  The woman was engrossed with the bill of fare, but the child’s attention seemed riveted upon the Sausage Chappie.  He was drinking him in with wide eyes.  He seemed to be brooding on him.

Archie, too, was brooding on the Sausage Chappie, The latter made an excellent waiter:  he was brisk and attentive, and did the work as if he liked it; but Archie was not satisfied.  Something seemed to tell him that the man was fitted for higher things.  Archie was a grateful soul.  That sausage, coming at the end of a five-hour hike, had made a deep impression on his plastic nature.  Reason told him that only an exceptional man could have parted with half a sausage at such a moment; and he could not feel that a job as waiter at a New York hotel was an adequate job for an exceptional man.  Of course, the root of the trouble lay in the fact that the fellow could not remember what his real life-work had been before the war.  It was exasperating to reflect, as the other moved away to take his order to the kitchen, that there, for all one knew, went the dickens of a lawyer or doctor or architect or what not.

His meditations were broken by the voice of the child.

“Mummie,” asked the child interestedly, following the Sausage Chappie with his eyes as the latter disappeared towards the kitchen, “why has that man got such a funny face?”

“Hush, darling.”

“Yes, but why has he?”

“I don’t know, darling.”

The child’s faith in the maternal omniscience seemed to have received a shock.  He had the air of a seeker after truth who has been baffled.  His eyes roamed the room discontentedly.