I found, however, neither puppy-dog nor rat on the _carte du jour_ of the Cathay Restaurant. The restaurant is on the first floor above a bank. A commissionaire stands at the outer portals, and there is a lift for the benefit of anyone who is too lazy to walk up a single flight of stairs. The restaurant itself is hardly sufficiently Oriental in appearance to be a Cockney's beau ideal of a Chinese restaurant. It is just what a progressive restaurant for Chinamen in Peking would be, for though the food is Chinese food, cooked by a Chinese cook, the appearance of the restaurant is almost European, an exaggerated copy of a French restaurant, with here and there Chinese touches which redeem the place from tawdriness. There is on the wall a paper with a pattern of gold fleurs-de-lis, the carpet is crimson, the chairs and tables are of European make, the waiters are of European nationalities and wear dress clothes. But a strip of good Chinese embroidery is hung along that side of the restaurant where the serving-room is behind a glassed screen; there are porcelain vases on the two mantelshelves; a great Chinese ornament of carved wood, gold and crimson and black, hangs by a ribbon just inside one of the windows; the big curtains to the windows are of old gold Chinese silk, and the little curtains, also of Oriental silk, are lilac in tint. The manager of the restaurant is a Chinaman with short-cut hair, and he wears the same neat, dark garments that all European managers assume. I sat down at one of the tables, asked the young Italian who came to wait on me to show me a _carte du jour_ and the menu of the set lunch, if there was one, and then looked round at the people who were taking their meal there. The Chinese in London certainly patronise their own restaurant, for quite half the people who were eating luncheon were Celestials. There were two young Chinese boys in the charge of a grey-haired English lady. There were several young Chinamen whom I mentally put down as students. An older Chinese gentleman had brought his wife out to lunch; and before I left, a party of Chinese gentlemen came in, whom, from the respect shown to them by the manager, I judged to be secretaries of the Chinese Embassy--the Chinese Ambassador, whom I know by sight, was not amongst them. Nowadays when Chinese gentlemen and ladies wear European clothes, and the men have their hair short, one has to look at their faces to detect the difference between them and Europeans.