We are livin' now at an elegant hotel, where we sit down forty-seven of
us every day, at the sound of a big bell at one o'clock. They call it
the table doat, and I don't wonder they do, for it's the pleasantest
place I ever see. We goes down, linked arm-in-arm, me and Lord George's
man, Mister Slipper, and the Frinsh made lan in' on Moun-seer Gregory,
the currier; and there's as much bowin' and scrapin', or more, than
upstairs in the parlor. Mr. Slipper takes the head of the table, and I
am on his rite, and mam-eel on his left, and the dishes all cams to us
first, and we tumble the things about, and helps ourselves to the best
before the others, and we laff so loud, Shusan, for Mr. Slipper is
uncommon drol, and tells a number of stories that makes me cry for
laffin'; and he is just as polite, too, for whinever he tells anything
wrong he says it in French. And if you only heerd the way masters and
mistresses is spoke of, Shu-san, you 'd pity poor sarvants that has to
live with them, and put up with their bad 'umors. Mr. Slipper himself
is trated like a dog, on eighty pounds a year, and what he calls the
spoils,--that's the close that's spoiled. Many the day he never sees the
newspaper, for Lord G. sticks it in his pocket, and carries it out with
him; and when he went out to tay, the other evenin', there was n't an
embroidered shirt of his master's to put on, and he was obleeged to take
a plain cambric to make a clane breast of it! "Faix," says he, "there's
no sayin' what will happen soon, and maybe the day 'll cum I 'll have
to buy my own cigars." He had an iligant place before this one,--Sir
Michael Bexley,--but tho' the wagis was high, and the eating first-rate,
he could n't stay. "We wore in Vi-enna," says he, "where they dance a
grate dale in sosiety, and Sir Michael's hands and feet was smaller than
mine, and I could n't wear either his kid gloves or his dress-boots, and
goin' out every night the expense was krushin'."
Mamsel is trated just as bad. It's maybe three when she gets to bed; her
mistress, Mrs. G., would n't take a flour out of her head herself, but
must have the poor crayture waitin' there, like a centry. And maybe it's
at that time o' night she 'll take the notion of seein' how it bekomes
her to have her hare, this way or that, or to see if she'd look better
with more paint on her, or if her eyebrows was blacker.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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