As he leaves the room he points out some proof
of unexampled magnanimity on the part of the hotel; as, for
instance, the fact that the management has not charged a penny for
sending up Miss Monroe's breakfast trays. Francesca impulsively
presses two shillings into his honest hand and remembers afterwards
that only one breakfast was served in our bedrooms during that
particular week, and that it was mine, not hers.
The Paid Out column is another source of great anxiety. Francesca
is a person who is always buying things unexpectedly and sending
them home C.O.D.; always taking a cab and having it paid at the
house; always sending telegrams and messages by hansom, and notes by
the Boots.
I should think, were England on the brink of a war, that the Prime
Minister might expect in his office something of the same hubbub,
uproar, and excitement that Francesca manages to evolve in this
private hotel. Naturally she cannot remember her expenditures, or
extravagances, or complications of movement for a period of seven
days; and when she attacks the Paid Out column she exclaims in a
frenzy, 'Just look at this! On the 11th they say they paid out
three shillings in telegrams, and I was at Maidenhead!' Then
because we love her and cannot bear to see her charming forehead
wrinkled, we approach from our respective corners, and the
conversation is something like this:-
Salemina. "You were not at Maidenhead on the 11th, Francesca; it
was the 12th."
Francesca. "Oh! so it was; but I sent no telegrams on the 11th."
Penelope. "Wasn't that the day you wired Mr. Drayton that you
couldn't go to the Zoo?"
Francesca. "Oh yes, so I did: and to Mr. Godolphin that I could.
I remember now; but that's only two."
Salemina. "How about the hairdresser whom you stopped coming from
Kensington?"
Francesca. "Yes, she's the third, that's all right then; but what
in the world is this twelve shillings?"
Penelope. "The foolish amber beads you were persuaded into buying
in the Burlington Arcade?"
Francesca. "No, those were seven shillings, and they are splitting
already."
Salemina. "Those soaps and sachets you bought on the way home the
day that you left your purse in the cab?"
Francesca. "No; they were only five shillings. Oh, perhaps they
lumped the two things; if seven and five are twelve, then that is
just what they did. (Here she takes a pencil.) Yes, they are
twelve, so that's right; what a comfort! Now here's two and six on
the 13th. That was yesterday, and I can always remember yesterdays;
they are my strong point. I didn't spend a penny yesterday; oh yes!
I did pay half a crown for a potted plant, but it was not two and
six, and it was a half-crown because it was the first time I had
seen one and I took particular notice. I'll speak to Dawson about
it, but it will make no difference. Nobody but an expert English
accountant could find a flaw in one of these bills and prove his
case."
By this time we have agreed that the weekly bill as a whole is
substantially correct, and all that Salemina has to do is to
estimate our several shares in it; so Francesca and I say good night
and leave her toiling like Cicero in his retirement at Tusculum. By
midnight she has generally brought the account to a point where a
half-hour's fresh attention in the early morning will finish it.
Not that she makes it come out right to a penny. She has been
treasurer of the Boston Band of Benevolence, of the Saturday Morning
Sloyd Circle, of the Club for the Reception of Russian Refugees, and
of the Society for the Brooding of Buddhism; but none of these
organisations carries on its existence by means of pounds,
shillings, and pence, or Salemina's resignation would have been
requested long ago. However, we are not disposed to be captious; we
are too glad to get rid of the bill. If our united thirds make four
or five shillings in excess, we divide them equally; if it comes the
other way about, we make it up in the same manner; always meeting
the sneers of masculine critics with Dr. Holmes's remark that a
faculty for numbers is a sort of detached-lever arrangement that can
be put into a mighty poor watch.
Chapter II. The powdered footman smiles.
Salemina is so English! I can't think how she manages. She had not
been an hour on British soil before she asked a servant to fetch in
some coals and mend the fire; she followed this Anglicism by a
request for a grilled chop, 'a grilled, chump chop, waiter, please,'
and so on from triumph to triumph. She now discourses of methylated
spirits as if she had never in her life heard of alcohol, and all
the English equivalents for Americanisms are ready for use on the
tip of her tongue. She says 'conserv't'ry' and 'observ't'ry'; she
calls the chambermaid 'Mairy,' which is infinitely softer, to be
sure, than the American 'Mary,' with its over-long a; she ejaculates
'Quite so!' in all the pauses of conversation, and talks of smoke-
rooms, and camisoles, and luggage-vans, and slip-bodies, and trams,
and mangling, and goffering. She also eats jam for breakfast as if
she had been reared on it, when every one knows that the average
American has to contract the jam habit by patient and continuous
practice.
This instantaneous assimilation of English customs does not seem to
be affectation on Salemina's part; nor will I wrong her by fancying
that she went through a course of training before she left Boston.
From the moment she landed you could see that her foot was on her
native heath.
