"Isn't this quite wrong?" said little Mrs. Tota, who was evidently enjoying herself. "Oughtn't we to have slipped up the stairs like a couple of guilty things? Do you take your elderly relative round the kitchen?"
At that moment Henri appeared and said that our dinner was ready, and we went up the narrow stairs.
A little room, with a paper in which old gold and soft browns and green mingled, three windows with warm-coloured curtains to match the paper, bronze ornaments on the mantelpiece, oil paintings of Italian scenery on the walls, a tiny sideboard, a square table lighted by gilt candelabra holding electric lights—Room A is a very snug place to dine in.
"H'm, yes," said Mrs. Tota. "Not quite like the room in the dear old Chalet; but quite near enough."
Henri had taken us under his special protection, and had added half a dozen hors-d'œuvre to the menu besides the caviar, and when the time came for our slices of tongue he appeared bearing a whole tongue lavishly garnished.
It was a capital dinner, well cooked throughout, and as Mrs. Tota praised each dish Henri beamed more and more upon us. And Mrs. Tota chattered like her namesake. We talked about the famous masked ball at Simla, at which Field-Marshal Lord Roberts, disguised in mask and domino, went up to a humorous Irish lady, and, in a feigned voice, asked her for a dance, receiving a reply that she "hadn't time to be dancing with boys to-night." We talked of gymkhanas at Annandale, and picnics at Mashobra, of A.D.C. theatricals and town-hall balls, and we effectually brought the scent of the deodars into Soho.
Mrs. Tota finished her coffee and Curaçoa Marnier, and sighed as she drew on her gloves. "Those were good days," she said, and I nodded assent.
I told Henri to bring me the bill. Two dinners, £1: 1s.; one Moët, 15s.; two cafés, 1s.; two liqueurs, 2s.; total, £1: 19s.
"Henri," I said, "you have let me off too lightly. It should be more than this"; whereat Henri went through an expressive pantomime which meant that to undercharge me was the last thing the management would think of doing.
We left the domino in Henri's charge, and Mrs. Tota thought she would walk the few yards to the Palace. "If all dinners in private rooms are as pleasant as that, I rather think that I envy your elderly male relative," said Mrs. Tota as we emerged into Church Street.