The waiter bowed and retired. Adna spoke to his family:
“Since we pay the same, anyway, might's well have the best they got.”
The waiter gave the three a meal fitter for the ancient days when kings had dinner at nine in the morning than for these degenerate times when breakfast hardly lives up to its name.
The waiter and his cronies stood at a safe distance and watched the Thropps surround that banquet. They wondered where the old man got money enough to buy such breakfasts and why he didn't spend some of it on clothes.
The favorite theory was that he was a farmer on whose acres somebody had discovered oil or gold and bought him out for a million. Mr. Thropp's proper waiter hoped that he would be as extravagant with his tip as he was with his order. He feared not. His waiterly intuition told him the old man put in with more enthusiasm than he paid out.
At last the meal was over. The Thropps were groaning. They had not quite absorbed the feast, but they had wrecked it utterly. Mr. Thropp found only one omission in the perfect service. The toothpicks had to be asked for. All three Thropps wanted them.
While Thropp was fishing in his pocket for a quarter, and finding only half a dollar which he did not want to reveal, the waiter placed before him a closely written manuscript, face down, with a lead-pencil on top of it.
“What's this?” said Thropp.
“Will you please to sign your name and room number, sir?” the waiter suggested.
“Oh, I see,” said Thropp, and explained to his little flock. “You see, they got to keep tabs on the regular boarders.”