Table d'Hôte

This etext was transcribed by Les Bowler
BY W. PETT RIDGE
HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
Printed in 1911
“Boots!” he roared, for the second time. His wife, opening the kitchen door, looked in, and surveyed him.
“If I have to order you,” said Mr. Baynes, speaking with great distinctness, “to come and take off my boots again, I shall dock half a crown off your weekly allowance to-morrow.”
She did not answer.
“My best plan,” he went on, “will be to draw it all up in black and white, so that we can have a clear and proper understandin’ one with the other. We must have a proper system of fines, same as they do in every well-regulated business. Fetch the pen and ink and paper.”
“How would it be to fetch it for yourself?”
He stared at her amazedly. Searching his pockets, he found there a small memorandum-book and a short piece of pencil.
“I’m going to keep calm with you,” he said deliberately, “because, so far as I can see, you’ve taken leave, for the present, of your senses. You’ll be sorry for it when you come back to ’em. Now then, let’s make out a list. ‘For not answering when called, one shilling.’”
He wrote this carefully on a page, regarding it with satisfaction at the finish. “See what that means? That means, for every time you pretend to be deaf when I shout at you, you’ll be docked a bob at the end of the week.”