 female
member of the Roe family: also that his first long-clothes were made from a blue
bag.
    Into the dining-house, unaffected by the seductive show in the window, of
artificially whitened cauliflowers and poultry, verdant baskets of peas, coolly
blooming cucumbers, and joints ready for the spit, Mr. Smallweed leads the way.
They know him there, and defer to him. He has his favourite box, he bespeaks all
the papers, he is down upon bald patriarchs, who keep them more than ten minutes
afterwards. It is of no use trying him with anything less than a full-sized
bread, or proposing to him any joint in cut, unless it is in the very best cut.
In the matter of gravy he is adamant.
    Conscious of his elfin power, and submitting to his dread experience, Mr.
Guppy consults him in the choice of that day's banquet; turning an appealing
look towards him as the waitress repeats the catalogue of viands, and saying
»What do you take, Chick?« Chick, out of the profundity of his artfulness,
preferring »veal and ham and French beans - And don't you forget the stuffing,
Polly,« (with an unearthly cock of his venerable eye); Mr. Guppy and Mr. Jobling
give the like order. Three pint pots of half-and-half are superadded. Quickly
the waitress returns, bearing what is apparently a model of the tower of Babel,
but what is really a pile of plates and flat tin dish-covers. Mr. Smallweed,
approving of what is set before him, conveys intelligent benignity into his
ancient eye, and winks upon her. Then, amid a constant coming in, and going out,
and running about, and a clatter of crockery, and a rumbling up and down of the
machine which brings the nice cuts from the kitchen, and a shrill crying for
more nice cuts down the speaking-pipe, and a shrill reckoning of the cost of
nice cuts that have been disposed of, and a general flush and steam of hot
joints, cut and uncut, and a considerably heated atmosphere in which the soiled
knives and table-cloths seem to break out spontaneously into eruptions of grease
and blotches of beer, the legal triumvirate appease their appetites.
    Mr. Jobling is buttoned up closer than mere adornment might require. His hat
presents at the rims a peculiar appearance of a glistening nature, as if it had
been a favourite snail-promenade. The same phenomenon is visible on some parts
of his coat, and particularly at the seams.
