roof like the first. And twenty minutes of the next twenty-five we
spent in an admirable hansom, skimming east.

"Not much change in the old hole, Bunny. More of these magic-lantern
advertisements ... and absolutely the worst bit of taste in town,
though it's saying something, in that equestrian statue with the gilt
stirrups and fixings; why don't they black the buffer's boots and his
horse's hoofs while they are about it? ... More bicyclists, of course.
That was just beginning, if you remember. It might have been useful to
us.... And there's the old club, getting put into a crate for the
Jubilee; by Jove, Bunny, we ought to be there. I wouldn't lean forward
in Piccadilly, old chap. If you're seen I'm thought of, and we shall
have to be jolly careful at Kellner's.... Ah, there it is! Did I tell
you I was a low-down stage Yankee at Kellner's? You'd better be
another, while the waiter's in the room."

We had the little room upstairs; and on the very threshold I, even I,
who knew my Raffles of old, was taken horribly aback. The table was
laid for three. I called his attention to it in a whisper.

"Why, yep!" came through his nose. "Say, boy, the lady, she's not
comin', but you leave that tackle where 'tis. If I'm liable to pay, I
guess I'll have all there is to it."

I have never been in America, and the American public is the last on
earth that I desire to insult; but idiom and intonation alike would
have imposed upon my inexperience. I had to look at Raffles to make
sure that it was he who spoke, and I had my own reasons for looking
hard.

"Who on earth was the lady?" I inquired aghast at the first opportunity.

"She isn't on earth. They don't like wasting this room on two, that's
all. Bunny--my Bunny--here's to us both!"

And we clinked glasses swimming with the liquid gold of Steinberg,
1868; but of the rare delights of that supper I can scarcely trust
myself to write. It was no mere meal, it was no coarse orgy, but a
little feast for the fastidious gods, not unworthy of Lucullus at his
worst. And I who had bolted my skilly at Wormwood Scrubbs, and
tightened my belt in a Holloway attic, it was I who sat down to this
ineffable repast! Where the courses were few, but each a triumph of
its kind, it would be invidious to single out any one dish; but the
Jambon de Westphalie au Champagne tempts me sorely. And then the
champagne that we drank, not the quantity but the quality! Well, it
was Pol