My birds, hot from the oven,
would be food in the strictest sense of the word, my vegetables cooked
with a zealous attention, and my sweet immensely appealing without
being pretentiously spectacular. And for what I believed to be quite
the first time in the town, good coffee would be served.
Disheartening, indeed, had been the various attenuations of coffee
which had been imposed upon me in my brief career as a diner-out among
these people. Not one among them had possessed the genius to master an
acceptable decoction of the berry, the bald simplicity of the correct
formula being doubtless incredible to them.
The blare of a motor horn aroused me from this musing, and from that
moment I had little time for meditation until the evening, as the
_Journal_ recorded the next morning, "had gone down into history."
My patrons arrived in groups, couples, or singly, almost faster than
I could seat them. The Hobbs lad, as vestiare, would halt them for
hats and wraps, during which pause they would emit subdued cries of
surprise and delight at my beautifully toned ensemble, after which,
as they walked to their tables, it was not difficult to see that they
were properly impressed.
Mrs. Effie, escorted by the Honourable George and cousin Egbert, was
among the early arrivals; the Senator being absent from town at a
sitting of the House.
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