* * * * *

POINTS OF VIEW.

The manager had seen to it that the party of young men, being very
obviously rich, at any rate for this night, had some of the best
attendance in the restaurant. Several waiters had been told off
specially to look after them, the least and busiest of whom was little
more than a boy--a slender pale boy, who was working very hard to give
satisfaction. The cynic might think--and say, for cynics always say what
they think--that this zeal was the result of his youth; but the cynic
for once would be only partly right. The zeal also had sartorial
springs, this eventful day being the first on which the boy had been
promoted to full waiter-hood, and the first therefore on which he had
ever worn a suit of evening dress; which by dint of hard saving his
family had been able to obtain for him. Wearing a uniform of such
dignity and conscious that he was on the threshold of his career, he was
trying very hard to make good and hoping very fervently that he would
get through without any drops or splashes to impair the freshness of his
new and wonderful attire.

The party of young men, who had been at a very illustrious English
school together and now were either at a university or in the world,
were celebrating an annual event and were very merry about it. For the
most part they had, between the past and the present, as many topics of
conversation as were needed, but now and then came a lull, during which
some of them would look around at the other tables, note the prettier of
the girls or the odder of the men and comment upon them; and it chanced
that in such a pause one of the diners happened for the first time to