Page:Indiscretions of Archie.djvu/192

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INDISCRETIONS OF ARCHIE

forgotten it, by Jove. Saved my life, absolutely! Hadn't chewed a morse for eight hours. Well, have you got anything on? I mean to say, you aren't booked for lunch or any rot of that species, are you? Fine! Then I move we all toddle off and get a bite somewhere." He squeezed the other's arm fondly. "Fancy meeting you again like this! I've often wondered what became of you. But, by Jove, I was forgetting. Dashed rude of me. My friend, Mr. van Tuyl."

Reggie gulped. The longer he looked at it, the harder this man's costume was to bear. His eye passed shudderingly from the brown shoes to the tweed trousers, to the green scarf, from the green scarf to the straw hat.

"Sorry," he mumbled. "Just remembered. Important date. Late already. Er—see you some time——"

He melted away, a broken man. Archie was not sorry to see him go. Reggie was a good chap, but be would undoubtedly have been de trop at this reunion.

"I vote we go to the Cosmopolis," be said, steering his newly-found friend through the crowd. "The browsing and sluicing isn't bad there, and I can sign the bill, which is no small consideration nowadays."

The Sausage Chappie chuckled amusedly.

"I can't go to a place like the Cosmopolis looking like this."

Archie was a little embarrassed.

"Oh, I don't know, you know, don't you know!" he said. "Still, since you have brought the topic up, you did get the good old wardrobe a bit mixed this morning, what? I mean to say, you seem absent-mindedly, as it were, to have got hold of samples from a good number of your various suitings."