Had a fine time; what are you drinking, whisky?
_I'm_ going to have something to eat.

Didn't have much of a lunch to-day, but you ought to have seen the steak I had at the Grillroom--as thick as that, and tender! Oh, it went great! Here, hang my coat up there on that side, will you ?" Bancroft Ellis was one of the young men of the city with whom the three fellows had become acquainted just after their return from college.

For the most part, they met him at downtown restaurants, in the foyers and vestibules of the theatres, on Kearney Street of a Saturday afternoon, or, as now, in the little rooms of the Imperial, where he was a recognized habitue and where he invariably called for whisky, finishing from three to five "ponies" at every sitting.

On very rare occasions they saw him in society, at the houses where their "set" was received.
At these functions Ellis could never be persuaded to remain in the parlours; he slipped up to the gentlemen's dressing-rooms at the earliest opportunity, and spent the evening silently smoking the cigars and cigarettes furnished by the host.

When Vandover and his friends came up between dances, to brush their hair or to rearrange their neckties, they found him enveloped in a blue haze of smoke, his feet on a chair, his shirt bosom broken, and his waistcoat unbuttoned.