d other silver
ornaments sacred to all that's aesthetically captivating in fruit and
flower; while in the rear, calm, collected and decorous, stand a row of
middle-aged ministering persons from Gunter's. There are no chairs at
the buffet. If you sup there, you must sup standing--no great hardship,
as the table is of course of a height just convenient for the
purpose--and you can either accept the services of the ministering
person opposite you, or help yourself from the multitude of dishes
within reach. All very well, this, for those who are in a hurry, just
snatching a morsel between two dances, and for all who see no
practicable opportunity of doing better for their partners and
themselves. For, an intervening gangway being of course left clear for
folk to pass up and down to and along the buffet, the rest of the
floor-space is occupied by three or more (according to the size of the
room) small round tables, low, chair-surrounded, each laden with a due
complement of plates, glasses, victuals, and so on, and each capable of
accommodating three or four couples at a time. To one of these, if you
are wise, and have the luck to espy any vacant chairs, you will
surely--I am of course addressing my male readers--lead your partner. I
assume that, with an experienced eye to this very thing, you have
purposely contrived to engage one with whom you specially enjoy, or
think it likely that you will enjoy, a good gossip, for a quadrille that
occurs just at this period of the evening, and that you have suggested
"sitting out" the dance in the supper-room; so that you have now
descended the stairs happy in the consciousness of ten minutes or more
of leisure before the next "round" will again demand your indefatigable
_trois temps_ in the ball-room.

Well, two chairs secured, and partner comfortably seated on one of them,
the next thing for the man to do, before settling down into
conversation, is to forage at the buffet for supplies; for the stock
originally placed on the little table is pretty sure to have been
eviscerated in the course of the first half hour's attack. He doesn't
ask his partner to say what she will have, knowing full well that
ladies, young and old, even if so interrogated, are sure to give that
invariable pair of successive answers, "chicken" and "jelly," not
because they really prefer those to any other viands--as a matter of
fact, their own inclinations, so far as they are earthly enough to have
any, are gener