England -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Mothers and daughters -- Fiction; Paris (France) -- Fiction; Women -- Fiction
All the women turned to glance at the name through the window, and some of
them murmured sympathetic and interested exclamations and bright hopes.
There were five women: Miss Thompkins, Miss Nickall, Madame Piriac, Miss
Ingate and Audrey. And there was one man--Mr. Gilman. And the six were
seated at a round table in the historic Parisian restaurant. Mr. Gilman had
the air triumphant, and he was entitled to it. The supreme moment of his
triumph had come. Having given a luncheon to these ladies, he had just
asked, with due high negligence, for the bill. If there was one matter in
which Mr. Gilman was a truly great expert, it was the matter of giving a
meal in a restaurant. He knew how to dress for such an affair--with strict
conventionality but a touch of devil-may-care youthfulness in the necktie.
He knew how to choose the restaurant; he had about half a dozen in his
répertoire--all of the first order and for the most part combining the
exclusive with the amusing--entirely different in kind from the pandemonium
where Audrey had eaten on the night of her first arrival in Paris; he knew
how to get the best out of head-waiters and waiters, who in these
restaurants were not head-waiters and waiters but worldly priests and
acolytes; his profound knowledge of cookery sprang from a genuine interest
in his stomach, and he could compose a menu in a fashion to command the
respect of head-waiters and to excite the envy of musicians composing a
sonata; he had the wit to look in early and see to the flowers; above all
he was aware what women liked in the way of wine, and since this was never
what he liked in the way of wine, he would always command a half-bottle of
the extra dry for himself, but would have it manipulated with such
discretion that not a guest could notice it. He paid lavishly and
willingly, convinced by hard experience that the best is inestimable, but
he felt too that the best was really quite cheap, for he knew that there
were imperfectly educated people in the world who thought nothing of paying
the price of a good meal for a mere engraving or a bit of china. Withal,
he never expected his guests truly to appreciate the marvels he offered
them. They could not, or very rarely. Their twittering ecstatic praise,
which was without understanding, sufficed for him, though sometimes he
would give gentle diffident instruction. This trait in him was very
attractive, proving the genuineness of his modesty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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