thing—­when I don’t know what it is—­and he must bring me some of the other—­which I never heard of—­and when it comes I eat it, no matter what it turns out to be, and try to look as if I was used to it, but generally had it better cooked.  But, as I said before, it is of no use—­your humbleness is too much for me.  In a few days they will be bringing us cold victuals, and recommending that we go outside somewhere and eat them, as all the seats in the dining-room are wanted for other people.”

“Well,” said Jone, “I must say I do feel a little overshadowed when I go into that dining-room and see those proud and haughty waiters, some of them with silver chains and keys around their necks, showing that they are lords of the wine-cellar, and all of them with an air of lofty scorn for the poor beings who have to sit still and be waited on; but I’ll try what I can do.  As far as I am able, I’ll hold up my end of the social boom.”

You may think I break off my letters sudden, madam, like the instalments in a sensation weekly, which stops short in the most harrowing parts, so as to make certain the reader will buy the next number; but when I’ve written as much as I think two foreign stamps will carry—­for more than fivepence seems extravagant for a letter—­I generally stop.

Letter Number Three

[Illustration]

LONDON

At dinner-time the day when I had the conversation with Jone mentioned in my last letter, we was sitting in the dining-room at a little table in a far corner, where we’d never been before.  Not being considered of any importance they put us sometimes in one place and sometimes in another, instead of giving us regular seats, as I noticed most of the other people had, and I was looking around to see if anybody was ever coming to wait on us, when suddenly I heard an awful noise.

I have read about the rumblings of earthquakes, and although I never heard any of them, I have felt a shock, and I can imagine the awfulness of the rumbling, and I had a feeling as if the building was about to sway and swing as they do in earthquakes.  It wasn’t all my imagining, for I saw the people at the other tables near us jump, and two waiters who was hurrying past stopped short as if they had been jerked up by a curb bit.  I turned to look at Jone, but he was sitting up straight in his chair, as solemn and as steadfast as a gate-post, and I thought to myself that if he hadn’t heard anything he must have been struck deaf, and I was just on the point of jumping up and shouting to him, “Fly, before the walls and roof come down upon us!” when that awful noise occurred again.  My blood stood frigid in my veins, and as I started back I saw before me a waiter, his face ashy pale, and his knees bending beneath him.  Some people near us were half getting up from their chairs, and I pushed back and looked at Jone again, who had not moved except that his mouth was open.  Then I knew what it was that I thought was an earthquake—­it was Jone giving an order to the waiter.