At eight o'clock only stragglers remained to be fed, and my job was to clear out the ice chest of all but two of each dish, send it upstairs to the main kitchen, and then start scrubbing house. Schmitz let it be known that one of the failings of her whose place I was now filling, the one who was asked to leave the Friday night before the Monday morning I appeared, was that she was not clean enough. At first, a year and a half ago, she was cleanly and upright—that is, he spoke of such uprightness as invariably follows cleanliness. But as time wore on her habits of cleanliness wore off, and there were undoubtedly corners in the ice box where her waning-in-enthusiasm fingers failed to reach. But on a night when the New York thermometer ranges up toward the nineties it is a pure and unadulterated joy to labor inside an ice box. I scrubbed and rinsed and wiped until Schmitz almost looked approving. Only it was congenital with Schmitz that he never really showed approval of anything or anybody. Schmitz was the kind (poor Mrs. Schmitz with her three months only of freedom) who always had to change everything just a little. There would echo down the line an order, “One Swiss cheese, little one” (that referred to me, not the cheese). Schmitz would stroll over from where he was trying to keep busy watching everyone at once, enter the very confines of my compartment, and stand over me while I sliced that Swiss cheese. It was always either too big, in which case he took the knife from my hands and sliced off one-sixteenth of an inch on one end; or too small, in which case Schmitz would endeavor to slice a new piece altogether. The chances were it would end in being even smaller than the slice I cut. In that case, Schmitz would say, “Led it go, anyway.” And then, because he would always be very fair, he stood and explained at length why the piece was too big, if it were too big, or too small, if too small. “You know, it's dis vay—” My Gawd! not once, but every night. There was always one slice too many or too few on the sliced-tomato order. Schmitz would say, “There must be five slices.” The next time I put on five slices Schmitz stuck that nose of his around the waiter's shoulder. “Hey, vhat's dat? Only five slices? De guests won't stand for dat, you know. Dey pay good money here. Put anoder slice on.” I was wont to get fearfully exasperated at times. “But,” I remonstrated, “last time I had on six and you told me to put on five!” “Yes, yes, but I expect you to use your common sense!” That was his invariable comeback. And always followed by his patient: