“Tea or coffee, sir?”
“Hot milk,” one says.
“Hot milk!” he repeats. You have shocked his Toryism. You have dragged him out of the rut of tea and coffee, and he does not like it. However—brave, resourceful fellow!—he pulls himself together for an immense effort, and gives you hot milk, and you stand there, in front of the aperture, under the stars and over the sea and in the blast, trying to keep the cup upright in a mêlée of elbows.
This is the gate, and this the hospitality, of the greatest empire that, etc.
“Can I take this cup to the train?”
“Certainly, sir!” says the Punch and Judy man genially, as who should say: “God bless my soul! Aren’t you in the country where anyone can choose the portmanteau that suits him out of a luggage van?”
Now that is England! In France, Germany, Italy, there would have been a spacious golden café and all the drinks on earth, but one could never have got that cup out of the café without at least a stamped declaration signed by two commissioners of police and countersigned by a Consul. One makes a line of milk along the reef, and sits blowing and sipping what is left of the milk in the train. And when the train is ready to depart one demands of a porter:
“What am I to do with this cup?”
“Give it to me, sir.”
And he planks it down on the platform next a pillar, and leaves it. And off one goes. The adventures of that thick mug are a beautiful demonstration that the new England contains a lot of the old. It will ultimately reach the Punch and Judy show once more (not broken—perhaps cracked); not, however, by rules and regulations; but higgledy-piggledy, by mutual aid and good nature and good will. He tranquil; it will regain its counter.