So they made their way to the ‘Shilling Tea-room.’  Having paid at the entrance, they were admitted to feed freely on all that lay before them.  With difficulty could a seat be found in the huge room; the uproar of voices was deafening.  On the tables lay bread, butter, cake in hunches, tea-pots, milk-jugs, sugar-basins—­all things to whomso could secure them in the conflict.  Along the gangways coursed perspiring waiters, heaping up giant structures of used plates and cups, distributing clean utensils, and miraculously sharp in securing the gratuity expected from each guest as he rose satiate.  Muscular men in aprons wheeled hither the supplies of steaming fluid in immense cans on heavy trucks.  Here practical joking found the most graceful of opportunities, whether it were the deft direction of a piece of cake at the nose of a person sitting opposite, or the emptying of a saucer down your neighbour’s back, or the ingenious jogging of an arm which was in the act of raising a full tea-cup.  Now and then an ill-conditioned fellow, whose beer disagreed with him, would resent some piece of elegant trifling, and the waiters would find it needful to request gentlemen not to fight until they had left the room.  These cases, however, were exceptional.  On the whole there reigned a spirit of imbecile joviality.  Shrieks of female laughter testified to the success of the entertainment.

As Bob and his companion quitted this sphere of delight, ill-luck brought it to pass that Mr. Jack Bartley and his train were on the point of entering.  Jack uttered a phrase of stinging sarcasm with reference to Pennyloaf’s red feather; whereupon Bob smote him exactly between the eyes.  Yells arose; there was a scuffle, a rush, a tumult.  The two were separated before further harm came of the little misunderstanding, but Jack went to the tea-tables vowing vengeance.

Poor Pennyloaf shed tears as Bob led her to the place where the band had begun playing.  Only her husband’s anger prevented her from yielding to utter misery.  But now they had come to the centre of the building, and by dint of much struggle in the crowd they obtained a standing whence they could see the vast amphitheatre, filled with thousands of faces.  Here at length was quietness, intermission of folly and brutality.  Bob became another man as he stood and listened.  He looked with kindness into Pennyloaf’s pale, weary face, and his arm stole about her waist to support her.  Ha!  Pennyloaf was happy!  The last trace of tears vanished.  She too was sensible of the influences of music; her heart throbbed as she let herself lean against her husband.