Hors-d'œuvre variés.
Consommé aux Profiterolles. Crème Jackson.
Blanchailles.
Civet de lièvre à la Française.
Aloyau à la moderne.
Poulet rôti au cresson. Salade.
Choux à la crème.
Glace aux apricots.
Petits fours.
Dessert.
The whitebait, which was the first dish I tasted, was good. The beef and the chicken were both as good as the market affords. We drank a light hock which was eminently drinkable, and when M. Coccioletti, in explanation, as he presented the bill, said to my friend, "Three dinners at 3s. 6d.," it struck me that I had eaten a very good dinner for that price.
"Good-bye, old fellow—explain next time we meet—hope you'll have a good time at Olympia," was what my friend said as he helped the fair unknown into a brougham, and got in after her. She smiled at me. I was left on the doorstep with the awful responsibility of those two tickets for Barnum and Bailey's show.
31st December.
[CHAPTER XLVII]
EPITAUX'S (THE HAYMARKET)
The handwriting on the letter was familiar. The letter bore a U.S.A. stamp. I wondered why Miss Dainty, of all the principal London theatres, whom I had seen off one day last summer from St. Pancras, whence she started for the land of Dollars, and from whom I had not heard since, should have suddenly found reason to correspond with me.
Miss Dainty informed me that she was having a high old time in the States, that she was drawing a princely salary, that Jack, the fighting fox-terrier, was very well and as pugnacious as ever, and that she had not yet made up her mind which of the many wealthy men who had laid their money-bags at her feet she was going to marry. The real reason of the letter lay in the last sentence, in which she told me that a real nice girl who had been her room-mate on tour, was coming to England, to join a theatrical company, by the steamer that would carry her letter, and would I, she wrote, be of any service to the fair stranger I could, for her sake.