s palm, realized that he had
forgotten this man's order. He hesitated to go back. "Like as not,"
reasoned Dickie, "he didn't rightly know what the order was. He never
does look at his food. I'll fetch him a Spanish omelette and a salad
and a glass of iced tea. It's a whole lot better order than he'd have
thought of himself."

Nevertheless, it was with some trepidation that he set the omelette down
before that lined and averted countenance. Its owner was screwed into his
chair as usual, eyes, with a sharp cleft between their brows, bent on his
folded newspaper, and he put his right hand blindly on the fork. But as
it pricked the contents of the plate a savory fragrance rose and the
reader looked.

"Here, you damn fool--that's not my order," he snapped out.

Dickie tasted a homely memory--"Dickie damn fool." He stood silent a
moment looking down with one of his quaint, impersonal looks.

"Well, sir," then he said slowly, "it ain't your order, but you look a
whole lot more like a feller that would order Spanish omelette than like
a feller that would order Hamburger steak."

For the first time the man turned about, flung his arm over his
chair-back, and looked up at Dickie. In fact, he stared. His thin lips,
enclosed in an ill-tempered parenthesis of double lines, twisted
themselves slightly.

"I'll be derned!" he said. "But, look here, my man, I didn't order
Hamburger steak; I ordered chicken."

Dickie deliberately smoothed down the cowlick on his head. He wore his
look of a seven-year-old with which he was wont to face the extremity of
Sylvester's exasperation.

"I reckon I clean forgot your order, sir," he said. "I figured out that
you wouldn't be caring what was on your plate. This heat," he added,
"sure puts a blinder on a feller's memory."

The man laughed shortly. "It's all right," he said. "This'll go down."

He ate in silence. Then he glanced up again. "What are you waiting
for, anyway?"

Dickie flushed faintly. "I was sort of wishful to see how it would go
down."

"Oh, I don't mean that kind of waiting. I mean--why are you a waiter in
this--hash-hole?"

Dickie meditated. "There ain't no answer to that," he said. "I don't know
why--" He added--"Why anything. It's a sort of extry word in the
dictionary--don't mean much any way you look at it."

He gathered up the dishes. The man watched him, tilting back a little in
his chair, his eyes twinkling under brows drawn together. A moment
afterwards he l