A waiter bustled up with a high-ball. Jimmy thanked him with his
eyes. He needed it. He raised it to his lips.
"He's always drinking--"
He set it down hurriedly.
"--and making a disgraceful exhibition of himself in public! I
always think Jimmy Crocker--"
Jimmy began to wish that somebody would stop this girl. Why
couldn't the little man change the subject to the weather, or
that stout child start prattling about some general topic? Surely
a boy of that age, newly arrived in London, must have all sorts
of things to prattle about? But the little man was dealing
strenuously with a breaded cutlet, while the stout boy, grimly
silent, surrounded fish-pie in the forthright manner of a
starving python. As for the elder woman, she seemed to be
wrestling with unpleasant thoughts, beyond speech.
"--I always think that Jimmy Crocker is the worst case I know of
the kind of American young man who spends all his time in Europe
and tries to become an imitation Englishman. Most of them are the
sort any country would be glad to get rid of, but he used to work
once, so you can't excuse him on the ground that he hasn't the
sense to know what he's doing. He's deliberately chosen to loaf
about London and make a pest of himself. He went to pieces with
his eyes open. He's a perfect, utter, hopeless WORM!"
Jimmy had never been very fond of the orchestra at the Regent
Grill, holding the view that it interfered with conversation and
made for an unhygienic rapidity of mastication; but he was
profoundly grateful to it now for bursting suddenly into _La
Boheme_, the loudest item in its repertory.
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