The Observations of Henry: Illustrated — John Shaqi
The Observations of Henry: IllustratedJerome, Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka)
General
The Observations of Henry: Illustrated
Jerome, Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka)
England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, English; Waiters -- Fiction
“Oh,” I says, “what sort?” for I'd seen a good many of that lot
during six months I'd spent at a house in Fleet Street, and their
get-up hadn't sumptuousness about it, so to speak. “Kipper's”
rig-out must have totted up to a tidy little sum. He had a diamond
pin in his tie that must have cost somebody fifty quid, if not
him.
“Well,” he answers, “I don't wind out the confidential advice to
old Beaky, and that sort of thing. I do the tips, yer know. 'Cap'n
Kit,' that's my name.”
“What, the Captain Kit?” I says. O' course I'd heard of him.
“Be'old!” he says.
“Oh, it's easy enough,” he goes on. “Some of 'em's bound to come
out right, and when one does, you take it from me, our paper
mentions the fact. And when it is a wrong 'un--well, a man can't
always be shouting about himself, can 'e?”
He ordered a cup of coffee. He said he was waiting for someone,
and we got to chatting about old times.
“How's Carrots?” I asked.
“Miss Caroline Trevelyan,” he answered, “is doing well.”
“Oh,” I says, “you've found out her fam'ly name, then?”
“We've found out one or two things about that lidy,” he replies.
“D'yer remember 'er dancing?”
“I have seen her flinging her petticoats about outside the shop,
when the copper wasn't by, if that's what you mean,” I says.
“That's what I mean,” he answers. “That's all the rage now,
'skirt-dancing' they calls it. She's a-coming out at the Oxford
to-morrow. It's 'er I'm waiting for. She's a-coming on, I tell you
she is,” he says.
“Shouldn't wonder,” says I; “that was her disposition.”
“And there's another thing we've found out about 'er,” he says. He
leant over the table, and whispered it, as if he was afraid that
anybody else might hear: “she's got a voice.”
“Yes,” I says, “some women have.”
“Ah,” he says, “but 'er voice is the sort of voice yer want to
listen to.”
“Oh,” I says, “that's its speciality, is it?”
“That's it, sonny,” he replies.
She came in a little later. I'd a' known her anywhere for her
eyes, and her red hair, in spite of her being that clean you might
have eaten your dinner out of her hand. And as for her clothes!
Well, I've mixed a good deal with the toffs in my time, and I've
seen duchesses dressed more showily and maybe more expensively,
but her clothes seemed to be just a framework to show her up. She
was a beauty, you can take it from me; and it's not to be wondered
that the La-De-Das were round her when they did see her, like
flies round an open jam tart.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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