Yet it was still an
hour before dinner-time. We argued, she yielded not; we supplicated, she
was serene. The hotel had not been expecting an inundation of two
people, and so it seemed that we should have to go home dinnerless.
I said we were not very hungry a fish would do. My little maid answered,
it was not the market-day for fish. Things began to look serious; but
presently the boarder who sustained the hotel came in, and when the case
was laid before him he was cheerfully willing to divide. So we had much
pleasant chat at table about St. George's chief industry, the repairing
of damaged ships; and in between we had a soup that had something in it
that seemed to taste like the hereafter, but it proved to be only pepper
of a particularly vivacious kind. And we had an iron-clad chicken that
was deliciously cooked, but not in the right way. Baking was not the
thing to convince this sort. He ought to have been put through a
quartz-mill until the "tuck" was taken out of him, and then boiled till
we came again.
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