r should pass his lips, and Sake
Jollop, with all her like, might go to perdition. But heavens! how
sweltering it was under this glass canopy How the dust rose from the
trampled boards! Come, let's have tea. The programme says there'll be a
military band playing presently, and we shall return refreshed to hear
it.

So they made their way to the 'Shilling Tea-room.' Having paid at the
entrance, they were admitted to feed freely on all that lay before
them. With difficulty could a seat be found in the huge room; the
uproar of voices was deafening. On the tables lay bread, butter, cake
in hunches, tea-pots, milk-jugs, sugar-basins--all things to whomso
could secure them in the conflict. Along the gangways coursed
perspiring waiters, heaping up giant structures of used plates and
cups, distributing clean utensils, and miraculously sharp in securing
the gratuity expected from each guest as he rose satiate. Muscular men
in aprons wheeled hither the supplies of steaming fluid in immense cans
on heavy trucks. Here practical joking found the most graceful of
opportunities, whether it were the deft direction of a piece of cake at
the nose of a person sitting opposite, or the emptying of a saucer down
your neighbour's back, or the ingenious jogging of an arm which was in
the act of raising a full tea-cup. Now and then an ill-conditioned
fellow, whose beer disagreed with him, would resent some piece of
elegant trifling, and the waiters would find it needful to request
gentlemen not to fight until they had left the room. These cases,
however, were exceptional. On the whole there reigned a spirit of
imbecile joviality. Shrieks of female laughter testified to the success
of the entertainment.

As Bob and his companion quitted this sphere of delight, ill-luck
brought it to pass that Mr. Jack Bartley and his train were on the
point of entering. Jack uttered a phrase of stinging sarcasm with
reference to Pennyloaf's red feather; whereupon Bob smote him exactly
between the eyes. Yells arose; there was a scuffle, a rush, a tumult.
The two were separated before further harm came of the little
misunderstanding, but Jack went to the tea-tables vowing vengeance.

Poor Pennyloaf shed tears as Bob led her to the place where the band
had begun playing. Only her husband's anger prevented her from yielding
to utter misery. But now they had come to the centre of the building,
and by dint of much struggle in the crowd they obtained a standing
whe