Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. III, 1889.djvu/22

 Well, the Kitchen threatened to be a failure. It turned out that the cheaper peas were, in fact, of inferior quality, and the ladies hastened to go back to the dealer in Clerkenwell. This was something, but now came a new trouble; the complaint with which Mr. and Mrs. Batterby had known so well how to deal revived in view of the concessions made by the new managers. Shooter's Gardens would have no more peas; let some other vegetable be used. Again the point was conceded; a trial was made of barley-soup. Shooter's Gardens came, looked, smelt, and shook their heads. "It don't look nice," was their comment; they would none of it.

For two or three weeks, just at this crisis in the Kitchen's fate, Jane Snowdon attended with Miss Lant to help in the dispensing of the decoction. Jane was made very nervous by the disturbances that went on, but she was able to review the matter at issue in a far more fruitful way than Miss Lant and the other ladies. Her opinion was not asked, however. In the homely grey dress, with her modest, retiring manner, her gentle, diffident countenance, she was taken by the customers for a