ld, Ohio. That was
it. It suddenly came back to me."
"Splendid! Anything else?"
"Yessir! Just before I went to sleep I remembered my name as well."
Archie was stirred to his depths.
"Why, the thing's a walk-over!" he exclaimed. "Now you've once got
started, nothing can stop you. What is your name?"
"Why, it's--That's funny! It's gone again. I have an idea it began with
an S. What was it? Skeffington? Skillington?"
"Sanderson?"
"No; I'll get it in a moment. Cunningham? Carrington? Wilberforce?
Debenham?"
"Dennison?" suggested Archie, helpfully.--"No, no, no. It's on the
tip of my tongue. Barrington? Montgomery? Hepplethwaite? I've got it!
Smith!"
"By Jove! Really?"
"Certain of it."
"What's the first name?"
An anxious expression came into the man's eyes. He hesitated. He lowered
his voice.
"I have a horrible feeling that it's Lancelot!"
"Good God!" said Archie.
"It couldn't really be that, could it?"
Archie looked grave. He hated to give pain, but he felt he must be
honest.
"It might," he said. "People give their children all sorts of rummy
names. My second name's Tracy. And I have a pal in England who was
christened Cuthbert de la Hay Horace. Fortunately everyone calls him
Stinker."
The head-waiter began to drift up like a bank of fog, and the Sausage
Chappie returned to his professional duties. When he came back, he was
beaming again.
"Something else I remembered," he said, removing the cover. "I'm
married!"
"Good Lord!"
"At least I was before the war. She had blue eyes and brown hair and a
Pekingese dog."
"What was her name?"
"I don't know."
"Well, you're coming on," said Archie. "I'll admit that. You've still
got a bit of a way to go before you become like one of those blighters
who take the Memory Training Courses in the magazine advertisements--I
mean to say, you know, the lads who meet a fellow once for five minutes,
and then come across him again ten years later and grasp him by the hand
and say, 'Surely this is Mr. Watkins of Seattle?' Still, you're doing
fine. You only need patience. Everything comes to him who waits."
Archie sat up, electrified. "I say, by Jove, that's rather good, what!
Everything comes to him who waits, and you're a waiter, what, what. I
mean to say, what!"
"Mummie," said the child at the other table, still speculative, "do you
think something trod on his face?"
"Hush, darling."
"Perhaps it was bitten by something?"
"Eat
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