"None of your insolence, sir. I insist on having this—filth taken away and something suitable put before us. My wife has possessed a duodenal ulcer for fourteen years come September, and—"
"Be hanged to your duodenal ulcer! As this isn't its birthday, why should it have a blinking banquet. Let it take pot-luck with the rest of us."
A sudden burst of uncontrollable laughter made me turn sharply, to find that the reserve had fallen from our chilly waitress, who was vainly endeavouring to smother her laughter in her professional napkin.
"Oh, Bill!" she cried, "you've done it now. The game's up."
The old lady and gentleman arose in outraged dignity and started to leave the room, when a diversion was caused by the entrance of a pleasant-faced lady in hat and cloak. I had been semi-conscious for some moments of a motor-engine running at the hotel door.
"Oh, Mr. Gunthorpe, what luck!" cried the newcomer. "I've collected a full staff, and brought them all up from Dolgelly with me, look you."
"Thank heaven!" exclaimed the proprietor. "As soon as your barmaid is on her job we'll drink all their healths. I hope you won't be annoyed, Miss Jones, but I fear, I very greatly fear, you will lose a couple of likely customers at dawn or soon after. Here they are. Perhaps you can still pacify them. I can't."
Miss Jones turned to the old couple, who were waiting for the doorway to clear, with a disarming and conciliatory smile.
"I hope you will make allowances," she said, with a musical Welsh intonation. "I am the manageress, and everything is at sixes and sevens, look you. This morning I had trouble with the staff, and just to annoy me they all cleared off together. I had to leave the hotel to see what I could find in Dolgelly. Mr. Gunthorpe and the other guests in the hotel very kindly offered to see to things while I was away, and I'm sure they have done their best, indeed."
"Done their best to poison us, certainly," growled the old gentleman. "My wife has a duo—"