faint; but don’t mind me, I shall be better presently.’ Touched by
the feminine meekness of this answer, Mr. Grazinglands looked in at
a pastrycook’s window, hesitating as to the expediency of lunching
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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller
at that establishment. He beheld nothing to eat, but butter in
various forms, slightly charged with jam, and languidly frizzling
over tepid water. Two ancient turtle-shells, on which was
inscribed the legend, ‘SOUPS,’ decorated a glass partition within,
enclosing a stuffy alcove, from which a ghastly mockery of a
marriage-breakfast spread on a rickety table, warned the terrified
traveller. An oblong box of stale and broken pastry at reduced
prices, mounted on a stool, ornamented the doorway; and two high
chairs that looked as if they were performing on stilts,
embellished the counter. Over the whole, a young lady presided,
whose gloomy haughtiness as she surveyed the street, announced a
deep-seated grievance against society, and an implacable
determination to be avenged. From a beetle-haunted kitchen below
this institution, fumes arose, suggestive of a class of soup which
Mr. Grazinglands knew, from painful experience, enfeebles the mind,
distends the stomach, forces itself into the complexion, and tries
to ooze out at the eyes. As he decided against entering, and
turned away, Mrs. Grazinglands becoming perceptibly weaker,
repeated, ‘I am rather faint, Alexander, but don’t mind me.’ Urged
to new efforts by these words of resignation, Mr. Grazinglands
looked in at a cold and floury baker’s shop, where utilitarian buns
unrelieved by a currant, consorted with hard biscuits, a stone
filter of cold water, a hard pale clock, and a hard little old
woman with flaxen hair, of an undeveloped-farinaceous aspect, as if
she had been fed upon seeds. He might have entered even here, but
for the timely remembrance coming upon him that Jairing’s was but
round the corner.
Now, Jairing’s being an hotel for families and gentlemen, in high
repute among the midland counties, Mr. Grazinglands plucked up a
great spirit when he told Mrs. Grazinglands she should have a chop
there. That lady, likewise felt that she was going to see Life.
Arriving on that gay and festive scene, they found the second
waiter, in a flabby undress, cleaning the windows of the empty
coffee-room; and the first waiter, denuded of his white tie, making
up his cruets behind the Post-Office Directory. The latter (who
took them in hand) was greatly put out by their patronage, and
showed his mind to be troubled by a sense of the pressing necessity
of instantly smuggling Mrs. Grazinglands into the obscurest corner
of the building. This slighted lady (who is the pride of her
division of the county) was immediately conveyed, by several dark
passages, and up and down several steps, into a penitential
apartment at the back of the house, where five invalided old platewarmers
leaned up against one another under a discarded old
melancholy sideboard, and where the wintry leaves of all the
dining-tables in the house lay thick. Also, a sofa, of
incomprehensible form regarded from any sofane point of view,
murmured ‘Bed;’ while an air of mingled fluffiness and heeltaps,
added, ‘Second Waiter’s.’ Secreted in this dismal hold, objects of
a mysterious distrust and suspicion, Mr. Grazinglands and his
charming partner waited twenty minutes for the smoke (for it never
came to a fire), twenty-five minutes for the sherry, half an hour
for the tablecloth, forty minutes for the knives and forks, threequarters
of an hour for the chops, and an hour for the potatoes.
On settling the little bill – which was not much more than the
day’s pay of a Lieutenant in the navy – Mr. Grazinglands took
heart to remonstrate against the general quality and cost of his
reception. To whom the waiter replied, substantially, that
Jairing’s made it a merit to have accepted him on any terms:
‘for,’ added the waiter (unmistakably coughing at Mrs.
Grazinglands, the pride of her division of the county), ‘when
indiwiduals is not staying in the ‘Ouse, their favours is not as a
rule looked upon as making it worth Mr. Jairing’s while; nor is it,
indeed, a style of business Mr. Jairing wishes.’ Finally, Mr. and
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