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 Hotel Splendide the waiters never bent over you and breathed cordial suggestions down the side of your face--gave his order crisply in the Anglo-Gallic dialect of the travelling Briton. The waiter remarked, “Boum!” in a pleased sort of way, and vanished. “Nice old man!” said Sally. “Infernally familiar!” said Mr. Carmyle. Sally perceived that on the topic of the waiter she and her host did not see eye to eye and that little pleasure or profit could be derived from any discussion centring about him. She changed the subject. She was not liking Mr. Carmyle quite so much as she had done a few minutes ago, but it was courteous of him to give her dinner, and she tried to like him as much as she could. “By the way,” she said, “my name is Nicholas. I always think it's a good thing to start with names, don't you?” “Mine...” “Oh, I know yours. Ginger--Mr. Kemp told me.” Mr. Carmyle, who since the waiter's departure, had been thawing, stiffened again at the mention of Ginger. “Indeed?” he said, coldly. “Apparently you got intimate.” Sally did not like his tone. He seemed to be criticizing her, and she resented criticism from a stranger. Her eyes opened wide and she looked dangerously across the table. “Why 'apparently'? I told you that we had got intimate, and I explained how. You can't stay shut up in an elevator half the night with anybody without getting to know him. I found Mr. Kemp very pleasant.” “Really?” “And very interesting.” Mr. Carmyle raised his eyebrows. “Would you call him interesting?” “I did call him interesting.” Sally was beginning to feel the exhilaration of battle. Men usually made themselves extremely agreeable to her, and she reacted belligerently under the stiff unfriendliness which had come over her companion in the last few minutes. “He told me all about himself.” “And you found that interesting?” “Why not?” “Well...” A frigid half-smile came and went on Bruce Carmyle's dark face. “My cousin has many excellent qualities, no doubt--he used to play football well, and I understand that he is a capable amateur pugilist--but I should not have supposed him entertaining. We find him a little dull.” “I thought it was only royalty that called themselves 'we.'” “I meant myself--and the rest of the family.”