Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/206

Rh with a definitive shake of the head, and away he went to perform well duties divided between half a dozen half-bred waiters in our country. Nothing remained for us but to submit. In a Hudson River steamer (we remembered regretfully our national despatch) the "afterward" would have been time enough; at most, an affair of half an hour's waiting, but the perspective of a German's meandering through his "meridian" was endless. Besides, we were to land at Bieberich in two or three hours, so, "ladies most deject," we sat ourselves down in the only vacant place we could find, close to the head of the table. The people, for the most part, had taken their seats; here and there a chair awaited some loiterer, but one dropped in after another, and my last faint hope that, after all, the waiter would distribute us among them, faded away. There was some delay, and even those seated with the sweet security of dinner began to lose something of their characteristic serenity. There was a low growl from two English gentlemen near us, and the Germans beside us began mumbling their rolls. "Ah," thought I, "if ye who have been, as is your wont, feeding every half hour since you were out of bed, sitting lazily at your little tables here, could feel 'the thorny point of our distress,' you surely would give us that bread!"

The soup came, and as each took his plate, from the top to the bottom of the table, the shadows vanished from their faces as I have seen them pass from a field of corn as a cloud was passing off the sun. "I should have been quite content," said M., meekly,