And the girl--What you want,
Kedzie? The same's I'm takin'? All right. Oh, some grape-fruit, eh?
She wants grape-fruit. Got any good? All right. I guess I'll take
some grape-fruit, too; and let me see--I guess that'll do to start
on--Wait! What's that those folks are eatin' over there? Looks good
--spring chicken--humm! I guess you'd like that better'n steak, ma?
Yes. She'd rather have the chicken. All right, George, you hustle us
in a nice meal and I'll make it all right with you. You understand."
Adna called all waiters "George." It saved their feelings, he
had heard.
The waiter bowed and retired. Adna spoke to his family:
"Since we pay the same, anyway, might's well have the best they got."
The waiter gave the three a meal fitter for the ancient days when
kings had dinner at nine in the morning than for these degenerate
times when breakfast hardly lives up to its name.
The waiter and his cronies stood at a safe distance and watched
the Thropps surround that banquet. They wondered where the old man
got money enough to buy such breakfasts and why he didn't spend some
of it on clothes.
The favorite theory was that he was a farmer on whose acres somebody
had discovered oil or gold and bought him out for a million.
Mr. Thropp's proper waiter hoped that he would be as extravagant
with his tip as he was with his order. He feared not. His waiterly
intuition told him the old man put in with more enthusiasm than he
paid out.
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