After Francesca had broken ground on the bill in this way, Salemina,
on the next leisure evening, draws a large armchair under the lamp
and puts on her eye-glasses. We perch on either arm, and, after
identifying our own extras, we summon the butler to identify his.
There are a good many that belong to him or to the landlady; of that
fact we are always convinced before he proves to the contrary. We
can never see (until he makes us see) why the breakfasts on the 8th
should be four shillings each because we had strawberries, if on the
8th we find strawberries charged in the luncheon column and also in
the column of desserts and ices. And then there are the peripatetic
lemon squashes. Dawson calls them 'still' lemon squashes because
they are made with water, not with soda or seltzer or vichy, but
they are particularly badly named. 'Still' forsooth! when one of
them will leap from place to place, appearing now in the column of
mineral waters and now in the spirits, now in the suppers, and again
in the sundries. We might as well drink Chablis or Pommery by the
time one of these still squashes has ceased wandering, and charging
itself at each station. The force of Dawson's intellect is such
that he makes all this moral turbidity as clear as crystal while he
remains in evidence. His bodily presence has a kind of illuminating
power, and all the errors that we fancy we have found he traces to
their original source, which is always in our suspicious and
inexperienced minds. 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.