"L'Anglais pour rire."
Mees "O'Shocking!"
By the way, at the top of the daily menu at the Continental Hotel the déjeuner à la fourchette at 11 A.M. is styled "Lunch." Puller resents this as strongly as he does a waiter's answering him, "Yees, Sare," when he has given an order in his best French. Now this meal at 11 A.M. is not an English lunch, but is the French déjeuner à la fourchette. Is it becoming the common practice in hotels on the Continent? If so, the English will soon remember that they don't come abroad for lunch—they can "lunch" well enough at home—but they do come abroad for déjeuner à la fourchette, and, if they do not get it, they will stay away.
"It's confoundedly insulting!" exclaims Puller, indignantly. "Do they think we don't know what a déjeuner à la fourchette means? But, dash it, you know," he goes on, in the tone of a man whom a very little more of this sort of treatment would disgust with life generally, "they're making everybody abroad so English." Then he repeats, "So English, you know," in imitation of some American burlesque actor, and this has the effect of restoring his good humour. He thinks the quotation so apt and so humorous, that he expands in chuckles, and goes out of the salle-à-manger doing a step, and repeating, "So English, you know!" The French, Spanish, and the visitors of various nationalities, shake their heads, shrug their shoulders, and evidently hope he is harmless. The waiters smile, and this reassures the guests.
The special merit of the Royat Drinking Waters and Baths consists in the large amount of iron contained in them. Over the gates of the Park at Royat, where the Etablissement and Buvettes are situated, should be inscribed, for the benefit of English visitors, "Washing and Ironing done here."