The lounge--crimson under foot, with walls light cream in colour, good copies of portraits by British old masters in panels alternating with looking-glass doorways; with pillars of buff marble, veined with brown and having gilt capitals, and bronze amorini and sculptured groups of the Graces as supports for electroliers--is a delightful room, as one realises after dinner when the hour of coffee has come. The band, wearing in the evening their uniform of dark blue, the leader distinguished by a silver sash--in the daytime they are in crimson--are in a corner of the lounge close against the crystal screen that their music may be heard in the restaurant. Arched entrances in the eastern wall lead into the Winter Garden, another great hall with a glazed ceiling, with roses climbing up trellis-work, and with a great recess, up a broad flight of stairs, with pillars of green marble and a gilded fountain against its wall. The _salon de verdure_, as it is grandiloquently called, is above the new ballroom, the two great apartments occupying the space where the courtyard used to be. My guests of the particular night I am describing were my friend and old comrade, Pitcher, the editor of _Town Topics_, and his wife and his pretty daughter. I had determined that they should eat a typical Savoy dinner, and had been at some pains to obtain a really representative feast. Before I went away on my travels in the summer I had interviewed M. Blond, the general manager (who was brought back when he was half-way to Rome two years ago to take up the management of the Savoy), in his sanctum, telling him that when in the autumn I intended to write a couple of chapters concerning the Savoy, I should like to give a dinner including some of the specialities of the cuisine, and that I should like to have something descriptive to say as to such of the dishes of which the Savoy is proud that were not included in my little feast. We took into our conference M. Rouget, the Maître-Chef of the Savoy, who looks the genial, burly, contented person that the head of a great kitchen should be, and we chatted over new dishes and dishes with new names (which are not the same thing), and he gave me some particulars of his kitchens and of the great army of cooks employed in the Savoy, there being as many as two hundred and ten in the brigade. When, being back again in London, I carried out my intention of asking my editor to dinner, M. Soi, the manager of the restaurant, came into counsel. When I had made up my mind on the important matter whether my dinner should cost twelve-and-six or fifteen-and-six a head, and had stated that I should like the more expensive feast, I added that I hoped that no beef would be included in the menu, for Pitcher had been complaining of preliminary symptoms of gout. M. Soi on the day we were to dine--a Sunday--submitted to me a menu which I duly initialled as approved.