Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century; London (England) -- Description and travel
The other waiter changes his leg, and takes a
new view of you, doubtfully, now, as if he had rejected the resemblance
to his brother, and had begun to think you more like his aunt or his
grandmother. Again you beseech your waiter with pathetic indignation, to
‘see after that cutlet!’ He steps out to see after it, and by-and-by,
when you are going away without it, comes back with it. Even then, he
will not take the sham silver cover off, without a pause for a flourish,
and a look at the musty cutlet as if he were surprised to see it—which
cannot possibly be the case, he must have seen it so often before. A
sort of fur has been produced upon its surface by the cook’s art, and in
a sham silver vessel staggering on two feet instead of three, is a
cutaneous kind of sauce of brown pimples and pickled cucumber. You order
the bill, but your waiter cannot bring your bill yet, because he is
bringing, instead, three flinty-hearted potatoes and two grim head of
broccoli, like the occasional ornaments on area railings, badly boiled.
You know that you will never come to this pass, any more than to the
cheese and celery, and you imperatively demand your bill; but, it takes
time to get, even when gone for, because your waiter has to communicate
with a lady who lives behind a sash-window in a corner, and who appears
to have to refer to several Ledgers before she can make it out—as if you
had been staying there a year. You become distracted to get away, and
the other waiter, once more changing his leg, still looks at you—but
suspiciously, now, as if you had begun to remind him of the party who
took the great-coats last winter. Your bill at last brought and paid, at
the rate of sixpence a mouthful, your waiter reproachfully reminds you
that ‘attendance is not charged for a single meal,’ and you have to
search in all your pockets for sixpence more. He has a worse opinion of
you than ever, when you have given it to him, and lets you out into the
street with the air of one saying to himself, as you cannot again doubt
he is, ‘I hope we shall never see _you_ here again!’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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