It was a treat. I really think he was jealous."
Jim Dyckman did not laugh with her. He was thinking hard. He had seen
Cheever at the Biltmore, and a little later Cheever vanished. Cheever
must have seen Charity Coe then. And if he saw her, he saw him. Then
why had he kept silent? Dyckman had a chilling intuition that Cheever
was lying in ambush for him.
Again he was wrung with the impulse to tell Charity Coe the truth
about her husband. Again some dubious decency withheld him.
CHAPTER VII
The word "breakfast" was magic stimulant to the Thropps. Kedzie put
on her clothes, and the family went down to the elevator together.
They found their way to the Tudor Room, where a small number of men,
mostly barricaded behind newspapers, ate briskly. A captain showed
the Thropps to a table; three waiters pulled out their chairs and
pushed them in under them. Another laid large pasteboards before
them. Another planted ice-water and butter and salt and pepper
here and there.
Adna had traveled enough to know that the way to order a meal in
a hotel is to give the waiter a wise look and say, "Bring me the
best you got."
This waiter looked a little surprised, but he said, "Yes, sir. Do
you like fruit and eggs and rolls, maybe?"
"Nah," said Adna. "Breakfast's my best meal. Bring us suthin' hearty
and plenty of it. I like a nice piece of steak and fried potatoes
and some griddle-cakes and maple-surrup, and if you got any nice
sawsitch--and the wife usually likes some oatmeal, and she takes tea
and toast, but bring me some hot bread.
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