The Small Bachelor · Chapter 15 (2/2)

The two-seater moved away and turned into Washington Square. George stood looking after it long after there was nothing to look at but empty street. Then he started off, like some knight of old on a quest commanded by his lady, to get the dinner on which she had so strongly insisted. She had been wrong, of course, in telling him to go and dine: for what he wanted to do and what any good doctor would have recommended him to do was to return to the roof and gaze at the moon. But her lightest wish was law.

Where could he go most quickly and get the repulsive task done with the minimum waste of time?

The Purple Chicken. It was just round the corner, and a resolute man if he stuck to their prix fixe table-d’hôte at one-dollar-fifty, could shovel a meal into himself in about ten minutes⁠—which was not long to ask the moon to wait.

Besides, at the Purple Chicken you could get “it” if they knew you. And George, though an abstemious young man, felt that “it” was just what at the moment he most required. On an occasion like this he ought, of course, to sip golden nectar from rare old crystal: but, failing that, synthetic whisky served in a coffeepot was perhaps the next best thing.