Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. I, 1889.djvu/274

 Come, let’s have tea. The programme says there’ll be a militaiy band playing presently, and we shall return refreshed to hear it.

So they made their way to the “Shilling Tea-room.” Having paid at the entrance, they were admitted to feed freely on all that lay before them. With difficulty could a seat be found in the huge room; the uproar of voices was deafening. On the tables lay bread, butter, cake in huncheons, tea-pots, milk-jugs, sugar-basins,—all things to whomso could secure them in the conflict. Along the gangways coursed perspiring waiters, heaping up giant structures of used plates and cups, distributing clean utensils, and miraculously sharp in securing the gratuity expected from each guest as he rose satiate. Muscular men in aprons wheeled hither the supplies of steaming fluid in immense cans on heavy trucks. Here practical joking found the most graceful of opportunities, whether it were the deft direction of a piece of cake at the nose of a person sitting opposite, or the emptying of a saucer down your neighbour’s back, or the ingenious