There were conscientiously refined
and low-voiced people reeking with proud bashfulness; there were
aggressively smart people using pet diminutives for each other loudly
and seeking fresh occasions for brilliant rudeness; there were awkward
husbands and wives quarrelling furtively about their manners and ill
at ease under the eye of the winter; cheerfully amiable and often
discrepant couples with a disposition to inconspicuous corners, and the
jolly sort, affecting an unaffected ease; plump happy ladies who laughed
too loud, and gentlemen in evening dress who subsequently "got their
pipes." And nobody, you knew, was anybody, however expensively they
dressed and whatever rooms they took.
I look back now with a curious remoteness of spirit to those crowded
dining-rooms with their dispersed tables and their inevitable red-shaded
lights and the unsympathetic, unskillful waiters, and the choice of
"Thig or Glear, Sir?" I've not dined in that way, in that sort of place,
now for five years--it must be quite five years, so specialised and
narrow is my life becoming.
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