"My dear Ted," wrote the Woolwich Infant (of course we could not escape calling Jack Woolwich thus), "I do wish we had you here. Such larks! We've got the most comical cuss of a waiter you ever saw. I feel sure he would appeal irresistibly to your sense of humour. He seems to boss the whole establishment. His name is Jones; and when you have known him a day you feel that he is the only Jones--the only Jones possible. He is a middle-aged man, with a slight stoop and a cat-like crawl. His face is large and flabby, ornamented with mutton-chop whiskers, streaked as with the silver of half a century of tips. He is always at your elbow--a mercenary Mephistopheles--suggesting drives or sails, and recommending certain yachts, boats, and carriages with insinuative irresistibleness. He has the tenacity of an army of able-bodied leeches, and if you do not take his advice he spoils your day. You may shake him off by fleeing into the interior of the Isle, or plunging into the sea; but you cannot be always trotting about or bathing; and at mealtimes he waits upon those who have disregarded his recommendations. He has a hopelessly corruptive effect on the soul, and I, who have always prided myself on my immaculate moral get-up, was driven to desperate lying within twenty-four hours of my arrival. I told him how much I had enjoyed the carriage-drive he had counselled, or the sail he had sanctioned by his approval; and, in return, he regaled me with titbits at our _table d'hôte_ dinner. But the next day he followed me about with large, reproachful eyes, in grieved silence. I saw that he knew all; and I dragged myself along with my tail between my legs, miserably asking myself how I could regain his respect. [Illustration: "THE INFANT."] "Wherever I turned I saw nothing but those dilated orbs of rebuke. I took refuge in my bedroom, but he glided in to give me a bad French halfpenny the chambermaid had picked up under my bed; and the implied contrast to be read in those eyes, between the honesty of the establishment and my own, was more than I could bear. I flew into a passion--the last resource of detected guilt--and irrelevantly told him I would choose my own amusements, and that I had not come down to increase his commissions. "Ted, till my dying day I shall not forget the dumb martyrdom of those eyes! When he was sufficiently recovered to speak, he swore, in a voice broken by emotion, that he would scorn taking commissions from the quarters I imagined. Ashamed of my unjust suspicions, I apologised, and went out that afternoon alone for a trip in the _Mayblossom_, and was violently sick. Merton funked it because the weather was rough, and had a lucky escape; but he had to meet Jones in the evening.