“That is the side-hall dining-room,” she told me, indicating a large basement room, rudely equipped with tables and chairs. “It’s where the office help, housekeepers, and linen-room girls eat.” We turned and were going back up the steep stairs when she asked: “Did you notice that the assistant housekeeper of Belgrave is lame?”
“She’s so lame that she can hardly walk,” I exclaimed. “I had to notice it.”
“She served in the side-hall,” the girl told me, still speaking half under her breath. “She fell down these steps with a loaded tray and was in the hospital for more than a year. She’s got her position for life. The Sea Foam has to take care of her.”
From the kitchen we passed through a long serving-room and from that we entered the Sea Foam dining-room. It was a spacious one with rows of very broad windows on four sides, those on three sides giving a splendid view of the ocean. The walls, woodwork, and the slender pillars supporting the ceiling were white enamel. There was a long strip of blue-gray velvet carpet extending from the door the entire length of the room. The steam-radiators, which almost encircled the room, were so brilliantly gilded that I almost imagined them covered with gold-leaf.
At dinner I was stationed at a table of six covers. My guests, I soon learned, were the family of a multimillionaire—wife, three small children, their French governess, and a trained nurse. For the first three meals I worked under the supervision of Anna, a waitress who had been in the Sea Foam for more than six months. One of her first instructions was:
“Don’t pay no attention to her,” indicating the millionaire’s wife. “She’ll work your head off and won’t give you so much as a thank-you.”
This family took their meals in two sections—the children with the governess and nurse, the mother alone. At the first dinner I served without the assistance of Anna the mistress of millions wrote her order as follows:
“Two portions of oysters on the half shell, two portions of olives, two portions of asparagus, two portions of the heart of lettuce without dressing, two portions of fried oysters, eight portions of the heart of celery, six portions of radishes, two portions of apples, two portions crystallized ginger, two cups of hot chocolate, two portions of crackers, two portions of cheese, two portions of squabs, two portions of green peas, two portions of queen fritters, two portions of chocolate ice-cream, and two portions of cake.”
She ordered me to bring it all in on the same tray, as she did not wish to be kept waiting. When one recalls the weight of hotel china and the custom of covering each dish with one a size smaller, the physical impossibility of obeying this order will be understood. Following Anna’s instructions, I “paid no attention” to the millionaire’s wife. It required three trays as heavy as I could lift to get her dinner in to her.
Each time I returned from the kitchen I found her in the act of trying to complain to the assistant head waiter. She grumbled at me because I did not stand behind her chair and put the dishes before her as fast as she wanted them. Of course, she did not eat all she ordered. She only cut a bit from the breast of both squabs, selected the oysters that suited her fancy, nibbled at the innermost hearts of the lettuce and the celery. What her dinner really amounted to was rendering unfit for use food which would have fed six hungry women. The ginger and the fruit she carried away in her work-bag.