Chapter Thirty Four.
Failures and Hopes Deferred, and Consequences.
Now, it chanced that, about the time of which I write, a noted bank failed, and a considerable sum of money which had been temporarily deposited in it by the committee of the Sailors’ Home at Wreckumoft was lost.
This necessitated retrenchment. All the salaries of officials were lowered—among them Kenneth’s, although the directors assured him that it would be again raised as soon as the Institution recovered from the shock of this loss.
Meanwhile, however, the secretary was compelled to postpone his marriage indefinitely.
Perhaps the shortest way to convey a correct idea of the dire effects of this failure to my reader will be to detail several conversations that took place in regard to it by various parties.
Conversation first was held between the head cook and head waiter of the Sailors’ Home. These worthies were seated on one of the dressers in the kitchen of the establishment;—and a wonderful kitchen it was, with culinary implements so huge as to suggest the idea of giant operators. There was a grate that might have roasted an ox whole. There were pots big enough to have boiled entire sheep, caldrons of soup that a little boy might have swum in, rolls and loaves that would, apparently, have made sandwiches for an army, and cups and saucers, plates and dishes that might have set up any reasonable man for life in the crockery line. But the most astounding vessels in that amazing place were the tea-pot and coffee-pot of the establishment. They stood side by side like giant twins; each being five feet high by a yard in diameter, and the pounds of tea and gallons of water put into these pots night and morning for tea and breakfast seemed almost fabulous. (See note 1.)
“It’s werry unfortinet, werry,” said the presiding spirit of this region.
“So ’tis,” observed the head waiter.
“Werry hard, too,” said the cook, “on a man like me, with a wife and six childer, to have his wages docked.”