“Sucking pig for two,” said Malcolm to the waiter, and paused for Poppet’s order.
“For three,” said Poppet, softly but firmly. While he had gone to execute the order, she [139] ]occupied herself with considering what pudding she would have. There were five or six down on the list: plum duff, apple pie and custard, treacle roly-poly, stewed pears, and macaroni and cheese. She was wavering between macaroni and plum duff, when the waiter returned with the three great steaming plates of sucking pig and vegetables.
Malcolm and Martha were soon busily occupied, both considering it would be sheer wilful waste, after paying a shilling each, to leave an atom on their plates; but Poppet found a very little satisfying, and fell to watching the sailors again.
She heard them give their orders—five of them, each a different meat and different vegetables; she wondered how the waiter could keep it all in his head, and watched quite anxiously when he returned with the tray to see if he made any mistake.
Just behind the screen where they filled the trays somebody stood handing plate after plate to the one busy waiter. Presently, as the place filled more and more she heard him say he must have some one to help at once, a number of people were waiting.
A boy in a long white apron stepped out from the screen, a tray with three corned beefs, two sucking pigs, and a roast mutton in his hand.
[140]
]“Miss Poppet, dear, do eat up your potato,” said Martha, pausing with a knifeload midway between her plate and mouth. But Poppet’s face was deadly pale, and in her eyes was a look of strange wildness.
“She’s ill,” said Martha; “I knew she oughtn’t to have it.” She looked at Malcolm in a helpless way for a second, and then pushed back her chair to go round to the child.
But [Poppet flung up] her arms, and with a wild, piercing shriek darted from her place and flew across the room.
There was a crash of crockery, one of those slow, piece-after-piece crashes, when you wonder if there can be anything left to be broken, angry words from the waiter and manager, confusion and laughter on the part of the diners, blankest amazement on the faces of Martha and Malcolm, and in the midst a small girl in a white frock and big hat clinging frantically to “a tallish little boy with brown eyes and dark, rough hair,”—a shabby, white-faced boy in a waiter’s apron.