[Illustration:  Jone giving an order]

I bit my lips and sat silent; the people around kept on looking at us, and the poor man who was receiving the shock stood trembling like a leaf.  When the volcanic disturbance, so to speak, was over, the waiter bowed himself, as if he had been a heathen in a temple, and gasping, “Yes, sir, immediate,” glided unevenly away.  He hadn’t waited on us before, and little thought, when he was going to stride proudly pass our table, what a double-loaded Vesuvius was sitting in Jone’s chair.  I leaned over the table and said to Jone that if he would stick to that we could rent a bishopric if we wanted to, and I was so proud I could have patted him on the back.  Well, after that we had no more trouble about being waited on, for that waiter of ours went about as if he had his neck bared for the fatal stroke and Jone was holding the cimeter.

The head waiter came to us before we was done dinner and asked if we had everything we wanted and if that table suited us, because if it did we could always have it.  To which Jone distantly thundered that if he would see that it always had a clean tablecloth it would do well enough.

[Illustration:  The Carver]

Even the man who stood at the big table in the middle of the room and carved the cold meats, with his hair parted in the middle, and who looked as if he were saying to himself, as with a bland dexterity and tastefulness he laid each slice upon its plate, “Now, then, the socialistic movement in Paris is arrested for the time being, and here again I put an end to the hopes of Russia getting to the sea through Afghanistan, and now I carefully spread contentment over the minds of all them riotous Welsh miners,” even he turned around and bowed to us as we passed him, and once sent a waiter to ask if we’d like a little bit of potted beef, which was particularly good that day.

Jone kept up his rumblings, though they sounded more distant and more deep under ground, and one day at luncheon an elderly woman, who was sitting alone at a table near us, turned to me and spoke.  She was a very plain person, with her face all seamed and rough with exposure to the weather, like as if she had been captain to a pilot boat, and with a general appearance of being a cook with good recommendations, but at present out of a place.  I might have wondered at such a person being at such a hotel, but remembering what I had been myself I couldn’t say what mightn’t happen to other people.

“I’m glad to see,” said she, “that you sent away that mutton, for if more persons would object to things that are not properly cooked we’d all be better served.  I suppose that in your country most people are so rich that they can afford to have the best of everything and have it always.  I fancy the great wealth of American citizens must make their housekeeping very different from ours.”