“No, no, no!” whispered one of the other juniors. “You mustn’t sit down with them, my rustic friend. We shall have to wait on them, and what they leave we—” He gave the remainder of the sentence in pantomime.
“Then I hope they won’t overdo it,” remarked the lad. “I begin to feel peckish.”
As lunch proceeded, the juniors cutting bread and filling glasses, men wearing favours who looked in at the doorway, crying, “Hallo, hallo! Feeding-time at the Zoo, eh?” were immediately invited to take knife and fork and help themselves, which they did with such enthusiasm that the juniors were near to the edge of tears, when Mr. Cruttwell stood up and said:
“Now, then, let’s bustle about, or we shan’t get our man in!”
The three clerks under twenty appeared to have some idea of compelling young Stansfield to attend upon them, but he pointed out that this arrangement would leave nobody to wait upon him, and he expressed a strong and decided preference for the principle of share and share alike. They gave in, robbing the act of some of its grace by pointing out that this must on no account be taken as a precedent, and that his good fortune in beginning London life on such a wonderful day did not mean that his business career would consist entirely of a beanfeast.
They also introduced him, rather severely, to certain table manners which he had not hitherto met, and he found himself greatly obstructed by a rule which prevented one from holding the leg of a fowl and dispensing with the assistance of a knife. The remains of a very fine old Stilton struck him as possessing a flavour entirely different from the American or Dutch to which he had been accustomed at home; the drawback was that you could not eat much of it.
“Do you smoke, Stansfield?”
“I’m not a slave to it!”
“You soon will be,” they prophesied. “Find the matches for us.”
As they puffed at their pipes, he read the financial journal spread upon the table, beginning with a casual attention, presently becoming interested. One or two points were dim to him, and he asked questions, but the others were either not completely informed, or they preferred to reserve the knowledge for private use, and they failed to explain to him why, if the newspaper people were aware that certain investments could not fail to be remunerative, the newspaper people gave the valuable tip away, instead of reserving it for their own personal benefit.