The girls behind the buffet remained nobly at their
posts, but the situation had outgrown their experience. Every now and
then a crash of crockery or crystal was heard over the din of shrill
voices, and occasionally a loud protest. Away from the buffet, on the
fine floor of the restaurant, a few waitresses hurried distracted and
aimless between the tables at which sat irate and scandalized persons
who firmly believed themselves to be dying of hunger. A number of people
were most obviously stealing food, not merely from the sideboards, but
from their fellows. At a table near to the corner in which Hugo, shocked
by the spectacle, had fallen limp into a chair, was seated an old,
fierce man, who looked like a retired Indian judge, and who had somehow
secured a cup of tea all to himself. A pretty young woman approached
him, and deliberately snatched the cup from under his very nose--and
without spilling a drop. The Indian judge sprang up, roared 'Hussy!' and
knocked the table over with a prodigious racket, then proceeded to pick
the table up again.
'Is it like this everywhere?' asked Hugo of Shawn.
And Shawn nodded.
'I might have foreseen,' Hugo murmured.
'I'll try to get you some tea, sir,' Shawn said, with an attempt to be
cheerful.
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