How those people ever
let such a person as me have a room at their hotel."
"It doesn't surprise me a bit," said Jone; "nobody but a very high and
mighty person would have dared to go lording it about that hotel with
her hat feathers and flowers all plastered down over her head. Most
people can be uppish in good clothes, but to look like a scare-crow and
be uppish can't be expected except from the truly lofty."
"I hope you are right," I said, and I think he was.
We hadn't been at the Babylon Hotel, where we are now, for more than
two days when I said to Jone that this sort of thing wasn't going to
do. He looked at me amazed. "What on earth is the matter now?" he said.
"Here is a room fit for a royal duke, in a house with marble corridors
and palace stairs, and gorgeous smoking-rooms, and a post-office, and a
dining-room pretty nigh big enough for a hall of Congress, with waiters
enough to make two military companies, and the bills of fare all in
French. If there is anything more you want, Pomona - "
"Stop there" said I; "the last thing you mention is the rub. It's the
dining-room; it's in that resplendent hall that we've got to give
ourselves a social boom or be content to fold our hands and fade away
forever."
"Which I don't want to do yet," said Jone, "so speak out your trouble."
[Illustration: "Ask the waiter what the French words mean"]
"The trouble this time is you," said I, "and your awful meekness. I
never did see anybody anywhere as meek as you are in that dining-room.
A half-drowned fly put into the sun to dry would be overbearing and
supercilious compared to you. When you sit down at one of those tables
you look as if you was afraid of hurting the chair, and when the waiter
gives you the bill of fare you ask him what the French words mean, and
then he looks down on you as if he was a superior Jove contemplating a
hop-toad, and he tells you that this one means beef and the other
means potatoes, and brings you the things that are easiest to get. And
you look as if you was thankful from the bottom of your heart that he
is good enough to give you anything at all. All the airs I put on are
no good while you are so extra humble. I tell him I don't want this
French thing - when I don't know what it is - and he must bring me some
of the other - which I never heard of - and when it comes I eat it, no
matter what it turns out to be, and try to look as if I was used to it,
but generally had it better cooked.
