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Chandon, Gout Americain,’ came the old waiter’s hissing voice in his ear.
    The moonfaced man was on his feet. ‘Ladies and Gentlemen…’
    ‘Silence in the pigsty…’ piped up a voice.
    ‘The big sow wants to talk,’ said Olga under her breath.
    ‘Ladies and gentlemen owing to the unfortunate absence of our star of Bethlehem and fulltime act…’
    ‘Gilly dont blaspheme,’ said the lady with the tiara.
    ‘Ladies and gentlemen, unaccustomed as I am…’
    ‘Gilly you’re drunk.’
    ‘… Whether the tide… I mean whether the waters be with us or against us…’
    Somebody yanked at his coat-tails and the moonfaced man sat down suddenly in his chair.
    ‘It’s terrible,’ said the lady in the tiara addressing herself to a man with a long face the color of tobacco who sat at the end of the table… ‘It’s terrible, Colonel, the way Gilly gets blasphemous when he’s been drinking…’
    The Colonel was meticulously rolling the tinfoil off a cigar. ‘Dear me, you dont say?’ he drawled. Above the bristly gray mustache his face was expressionless. ‘There’s a most dreadful story about poor old Atkins, Elliott Atkins who used to be with Mansfield…’
    ‘Indeed?’ said the Colonel icily as he slit the end of the cigar with a small pearlhandled penknife.
    ‘Say Chester did you hear that Mabie Evans was making a hit?’
    ‘Honestly Olga I dont see how she does it. She has no figure…’
    ‘Well he made a speech, drunk as a lord you understand, one night when they were barnstorming in Kansas…’
    ‘She cant sing…’
    ‘The poor fellow never did go very strong in the bright lights…’
    ‘She hasnt the slightest particle of figure…’
    ‘And made a sort of Bob Ingersoll speech . .’
    ‘The dear old feller… Ah I knew him well out in Chicago in the old days…’
    ‘You dont say.’ The Colonel held a lighted match carefully to the end of his cigar…
    ‘And there was a terrible flash of lightning and a ball of fire came in one window and went out the other.’
    ‘Was he… er… killed?’ The Colonel sent a blue puff of smoke towards the ceiling.
    ‘What, did you say Bob Ingersoll had been struck by lightning?’ cried Olga shrilly. ‘Serve him right the horrid atheist.’
    ‘No not exactly, but it scared him into a realization of the important things of life and now he’s joined the Methodist church.’
    ‘Funny how many actors get to be ministers.’
    ‘Cant get an audience any other way,’ creaked the man with the diamond stud.
    The two waiters hovered outside the door listening to the racketinside. ‘Tas de sacrés cochons… sporca madonna!’ hissed the old waiter. Emile shrugged his shoulders. ‘That brunette girl make eyes at you all night…’ He brought his face near Emile’s and winked. ‘Sure, maybe you pick up somethin good.’
    ‘I dont want any of them or their dirty diseases either.’
    The old waiter slapped his thigh. ‘No young men nowadays… When I was young man I take heap o chances.’
    ‘They dont even look at you…’ said Emile through clenched teeth. ‘An animated dress suit that’s all.’
    ‘Wait a minute, you learn by and by.’
    The door opened. They bowed respectfully towards the diamond stud. Somebody had drawn a pair of woman’s legs on his shirtfront. There was a bright flush on each of his cheeks. The lower lid of one eye sagged, giving his weasle face a quizzical lobsided look.
    ‘Wazzahell, Marco wazzahell?’ he was muttering. ‘We aint got a thing to drink… Bring the Atlantic Ozz-shen and two quarts.’
    ‘De suite monsieur…’ The old waiter bowed. ‘Emile tell Auguste, immediatement et bien frappé.’
    As Emile went down the corridor he could hear singing.
    O would the Atlantic were all champagne
Bright bi-i-i…
    The moonface and the bottlenose were coming back from the lavatory reeling arm in arm among the palms in the hall.
    ‘These damn fools make me sick.’
    ‘Yessir these aint the champagne suppers we