Subsequently he paid other fruitful visits in the neighbourhood, and
at about half-past eleven the fruit was arriving at Wilkins's in
the shape of many parcels and boxes, comprising diverse items in
the equipment of a man-about-town, such as tie-clips and Innovation
trunks.
Returning late to Wilkins's for lunch he marched jauntily into the
large brilliant restaurant and commenced an adequate repast. Of course
he was still wearing his mediocre lounge-suit (his sole suit for
another two days), but somehow the consciousness that Quayther &
Cuthering were cutting out wondrous garments for him in Vigo
Street stiffened his shoulders and gave a mysterious style to that
lounge-suit.
At lunch he made one mistake and enjoyed one very remarkable piece of
luck.
The mistake was to order an artichoke. He did not know how to eat an
artichoke. He had never tried to eat an artichoke, and his first essay
in this difficult and complex craft was a sad fiasco. It would not
have mattered if, at the table next to his own, there had not been
two obviously experienced women, one ill-dressed, with a red hat, the
other well-dressed, with a blue hat; one middle-aged, the other much
younger; but both very observant. And even so, it would scarcely have
mattered had not the younger woman been so slim, pretty and alluring.
While tolerably careless of the opinion of the red-hatted, plain woman
of middle-age, he desired the unqualified approval of the delightful
young thing in the blue hat.
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