capacity of a chambermaid. He wondered why he had no desire to laugh.




XII

A TICKLISH BUSINESS


Pierre was fierce and fat and forty, but he could cook the most
wonderful roasts and ragouts that Warburton ever tasted; and he could
take a handful of vegetables and an insignificant bone and make a
soup that would have tickled the jaded palate of a Lucullus.
Warburton presented himself at the kitchen door.

"Ah!" said Pierre, striking a dramatic pose, a ladle in one hand and
a pan in the other. "So you are zee new groom? Good! We make a butler
out of you? Bah! Do you know zee difference between a broth and a
soup? Eh?"

The new groom gravely admitted that he did.

"Hear to me!"--and Pierre struck his chest with a ladle. "I teach you
how to sairve; _I_, Pierre Flageot, will teach a hostler to be a
butler! Bah!"

"That is what I am sent here for."

"Hear to me! If zay haf oysters, zay are placed on zee table before