The head waiter came to us before we was done dinner and asked if we had everything we wanted and if that table suited us, because if it did we could always have it. To which Jone distantly thundered that if he would see that it always had a clean tablecloth it would do well enough. [Illustration: The Carver] Even the man who stood at the big table in the middle of the room and carved the cold meats, with his hair parted in the middle, and who looked as if he were saying to himself, as with a bland dexterity and tastefulness he laid each slice upon its plate, "Now, then, the socialistic movement in Paris is arrested for the time being, and here again I put an end to the hopes of Russia getting to the sea through Afghanistan, and now I carefully spread contentment over the minds of all them riotous Welsh miners," even he turned around and bowed to us as we passed him, and once sent a waiter to ask if we'd like a little bit of potted beef, which was particularly good that day. Jone kept up his rumblings, though they sounded more distant and more deep under ground, and one day at luncheon an elderly woman, who was sitting alone at a table near us, turned to me and spoke. She was a very plain person, with her face all seamed and rough with exposure to the weather, like as if she had been captain to a pilot boat, and with a general appearance of being a cook with good recommendations, but at present out of a place. I might have wondered at such a person being at such a hotel, but remembering what I had been myself I couldn't say what mightn't happen to other people. "I'm glad to see," said she, "that you sent away that mutton, for if more persons would object to things that are not properly cooked we'd all be better served. I suppose that in your country most people are so rich that they can afford to have the best of everything and have it always. I fancy the great wealth of American citizens must make their housekeeping very different from ours." Now I must say I began to bristle at being spoken to like that. I'm as proud of being an American as anybody can be, but I don't like the home of the free thrown into my teeth every time I open my mouth. There's no knowing what money Jone and I have lost through giving orders to London cabmen in what is called our American accent. The minute we tell the driver of a hansom where we want to go, that place doubles its distance from the spot we start from. Now I think the great reason Jone's rumbling worked so well was that it had in it a sort of Great British chest-sound, as if his lungs was rusty. The waiter had heard that before and knew what it meant. If he had spoken out in the clear American fashion I expect his voice would have gone clear through the waiter without his knowing it, like the person in the story, whose neck was sliced through and who didn't know it until he sneezed and his head fell off.