The manager had seen to it that the party of young men, being very
obviously rich, at any rate for this night, had some of the best
attendance in the restaurant. Several waiters had been told off
specially to look after them, the least and busiest of whom was little
more than a boy--a slender pale boy, who was working very hard to give
satisfaction. The cynic might think--and say, for cynics always say what
they think--that this zeal was the result of his youth; but the cynic
for once would be only partly right. The zeal also had sartorial
springs, this eventful day being the first on which the boy had been
promoted to full waiter-hood, and the first therefore on which he had
ever worn a suit of evening dress; which by dint of hard saving his
family had been able to obtain for him. Wearing a uniform of such
dignity and conscious that he was on the threshold of his career, he was
trying very hard to make good and hoping very fervently that he would
get through without any drops or splashes to impair the freshness of his
new and wonderful attire.
The party of young men, who had been at a very illustrious English
school together and now were either at a university or in the world,
were celebrating an annual event and were very merry about it. For the
most part they had, between the past and the present, as many topics of
conversation as were needed, but now and then came a lull, during which
some of them would look around at the other tables, note the prettier of
the girls or the odder of the men and comment upon them; and it chanced
that in such a pause one of the diners happened for the first time to
notice with any attention the assiduous young waiter. Although not old
enough to have given any thought to the anomaly of youth (though lowly)
attending upon youth (though gilded) at its meals in this way--not old
enough indeed to have pondered at all upon the relations of Capital and
Labour or of the domineering and the servile--he had reflected a good
deal upon the cut and fit of clothes, and there was something about the
waiting-boy's evening coat that outraged his critical sense. Nor did the
fact that the other's indifferent tailoring throw the perfection of his
own into such brilliant contrast--the similarity between the livery of
service and the male costume _de luxe_ fostering such comparisons--make
him any more lenient.
"Did you ever see," he asked his neighbour, "such a coat-collar as that
waiting Johnnie's? I ask you. How can anyone, even a waiter, wear a
thing like that? Don't they ever see themselves in the glass, or if they
do can't they see straight? Why, it covers his collar altogether."
His companion agreed. "And the shoulders! You'd have thought that in a
restaurant like this the management would be more particular. By George,
that's a jolly pretty girl coming in! Look--over there, just under the
clock, with the red hair." And the waiter was forgotten. Only, however,
by his table critics, for at that moment a little woman who had made
friends with the hall-porter for this express purpose was peering
through the window of the entrance, searching the room for her son. She
had never yet seen him at his work at all, and certainly not in his
grand waiting clothes, and naturally she wanted to.
"Ah!" she said at last, pointing the boy out to the porter, "there he
is! At that table with all the young gentlemen. Doesn't he look fine?
And don't they fit him beautifully? Why, no one would know the
difference if he were to sit down and one of those young gentlemen were
to wait on him."