Good heavens! The Blower of Bubbles had even ordered dinner in advance! With the feelings of an unwilling martyr, I followed my friend and his escort past tawdry millinery saleswomen, dining in state with their knights-errant of the haberdashery stores; by a table where a woman was gazing admiringly at a man with a face as expressionless as a pumpkin; through a lane of chattering, laughing, rasping denizens of the London that is neither West End nor East End--of people whose clothes, faces, and voices merged into a positive debauch of mediocrity. When we were seated and had ordered something from the waiter, I turned to Basil Norman for an explanation. "What is it?" I asked. "An affair with a seamstress, or are you just looking for 'copy'?" He laughed and lit a cigarette. "Pest," he said, "this is a caprice of mine, a tit-bit for my vanity. You would have chosen the 'Trocadero' or the 'Ritz,' with all the tyranny of Olympian and largessed waiters with whom it is impossible to attain the least pretence of equality. I prefer 'Arcadia,' where I am something of a patron saint, and am even consulted by the proprietor." "You play to humble audiences." "Quietly, Pest--the proprietor might hear you. He is a very Magog for dignity, I assure you, in spite of his asthma." "I gather, then, that you are a regular diner here?" "Hardly that. But I am a little more consistent than most of his patrons. To be candid"--he leaned towards me as if it were a secret of the first magnitude--"it's his cook." "His what?" "His cook. Really, I'm afraid he's hardly first class." "I am certain of it." "He would have made an admirable medieval Jesuit, but, as a matter of fact, I wonder Steinburg----" "The proprietor?" "Yes. I don't know why he keeps him on. He says the fellow has a couple of blind children, and if he were dismissed under a cloud he would have trouble in securing employment. But that's not business. The fellow's an ass, isn't he?" Whereupon his face beamed with delight, and his gray eyes twinkled like diamonds. My comment on the matter was stifled by the arrival of _hors-d'oeuvre_. I had no idea that one tray could hold such a variety of unpalatable things. At the table next to us a woman laughed boisterously, her shoulders, which were fat and formless, vibrating like blanc-mange. "Ah!" said Basil Norman; "Klotz has arrived."