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.
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