91Before long their curiosity impelled them to try the Victoria’s cuisine. They were a half hour before the time. No guests had yet gathered. They stood again in front of the aviary, but no polite philosopher made his appearance. A little yellow-haired maid in a frock as brightly purple as the violets, carrying decanters into the empty dining-room, was the only creature about. The sitting room offered them shelter from the wind, and for entertainment heaps of German novels and innumerable sketches of Sicilian scenery and types, which they hoped the Victoria’s artist patrons had not given in settlement of their hotel bills. A bell rang, and people streamed in until every seat in the clean, bare dining-room had its occupant. Not the artists Peripatetica and Jane were looking for, but types fixed and amusing, such as they had never before encountered in such numbers and contrasts. Rosy, bland English curates and their meek little wives; flashy fat Austrians, with powdered ladies of unappetizing look; limp English spinsters of the primmest propriety; seedy old men with dyed moustaches and loud clothes, diffusing an aroma of shady gambling-rooms. Scholarly old English professors; and Germans, Germans, Germans of all varying degrees of fatness, shininess, and loud-voicedness, but all united in double-action feeding power of knife and fork. An expectant hush held them all for a while before empty plates. Then the little purple-gowned maid, and a sister one in ultramarine blue, with the same brilliant yellow hair knotted on top of her head, appeared with omelettes. Omelettes of such melting perfection as to explain the solemn expectancy of the waiting faces. 92Followed a meal in which every course—fish, vegetables, meat, and salad, in a land where the tourist expects to subsist alone on oranges and scenery—was of a deliciousness to have made a Parisian epicure compliment the chef of his pet restaurant. The Germans were explained; lovers of feeding and of thrift, of course, they had come in their hordes to this modest Inn. And how they made the most of it! Back they called the little maids for two and three helpings of each delicious platter. Food was piled upon plates in mountains, but before Peripatetica and Jane could more than nibble at their own share, the German plates would be polished clean, and the little maids called for another supply. The caraffes of strong new Sicilian claret were emptied too, until Tedeschi faces grew very red, and tongues more than ever loud.