That same night at the supper table the subject came up again before an entirely different crowd. Three at the table had tried domestic service. Never again! Why? Always the answer was the same. “Aw, it's the feeling of freedom ya never get there, and ya do get it in a hotel.” One sweet gray-haired woman told of how she had worked some years as cook in a swell family where they kept lots of servants. She got grand wages, and naïvely she added, you get a chance to make lots on the side, o' course. I asked her if she meant tips from guests. Oh no! She meant what you made off tradespeople. Don't you see, if you got the butcher bill up so high, you got so much off the butcher, and the same with the grocer and the rest. She had a sister not cooking long who made over one hundred dollars a month, counting what she got off tradespeople. It is a perfectly accepted way of doing, mentioned with no concern. But on the whole, that supper table agreed that domestic service was a good deal like matrimony. If you got a good family, all right; but how many good families were there in the world? One woman spoke of working where they'd made a door mat of her. Barely did she have food enough to eat. There were four in the family. When they had chops the lady of the house ordered just four, which meant she who cooked the chops got none. After lunch this full Thursday I rushed to assist Mary. I loved going down the stairs into our hot scurry of excitement. Indeed, it was seeing behind the scenes. And always the friendly nods from everyone, even though the waiters especially looked ready to expire in pools of perspiration. At Monsieur Le Bon Chef's counter some sticky waiter had ordered a roast-beef sandwich. The heat had made him skeptical. “Call that beef?” The waiter next him glared at him with a chuckle. “An' must we then always lead in the cow for you to see?” A large Irishman breezed up to my Bon Chef. “Two beef à la modes. Make it snappy, chief. Party's in a hurry. Has to catch the five-thirty train”—this at one o'clock. Everyone good-natured, and the perspiration literally rolling off them. Most of the waiters were Irish. One of them was a regular dude—such immaculateness never was. He was the funny man of the place, and showed off for my special benefit, for I made no bones of the fact that he amused me highly. He was a very chippy-looking waiter—pug nose, long upper lip. When he ordered ice coffee he sneaked up on the Greek à la Bill Hart, ready to pull a gun on him. He had two names at his disposal and used one or the other with every order, no matter who the chef was. In a very deep tone of voice, it was either, “James, custard pie!” or, “Dinsmore, one veal cutlet.” But to me it was always: “Ah there, little one! Toast, I say _toast_. Dry, little one. Ah yes! There be them who out of force of habit inflicted upon them take even their toast dry. You get me, little one?”