-dressed ladies, robbed of their self-possession and their lunch by
delays and vexations and impositions in the departments, were actually
fighting for food. The girls behind the buffet remained nobly at their
posts, but the situation had outgrown their experience. Every now and
then a crash of crockery or crystal was heard over the din of shrill
voices, and occasionally a loud protest. Away from the buffet, on the
fine floor of the restaurant, a few waitresses hurried distracted and
aimless between the tables at which sat irate and scandalized persons
who firmly believed themselves to be dying of hunger. A number of people
were most obviously stealing food, not merely from the sideboards, but
from their fellows. At a table near to the corner in which Hugo, shocked
by the spectacle, had fallen limp into a chair, was seated an old,
fierce man, who looked like a retired Indian judge, and who had somehow
secured a cup of tea all to himself. A pretty young woman approached
him, and deliberately snatched the cup from under his very nose--and
without spilling a drop. The Indian judge sprang up, roared 'Hussy!' and
knocked the table over with a prodigious racket, then proceeded to pick
the table up again.

'Is it like this everywhere?' asked Hugo of Shawn.

And Shawn nodded.

'I might have foreseen,' Hugo murmured.

'I'll try to get you some tea, sir,' Shawn said, with an attempt to be
cheerful.

'Don't leave me,' begged Hugo, like a sick child. 'Don't leave me.'

'Only for a moment, sir,' said Shawn, departing.

Hugo felt that he was about to swoon, that he had suffered just as much
as a man could suffer, and that Fate was dropping the last straw on the
camel's back. His head fell forward. He was beaten for that day by too
many mysteries and too many tortures. And then he observed that the
pretty young woman who had stolen the cup of tea from the Indian judge
was hastening towards him with the cup of tea in one hand and several
pieces of bread-and-butter in the other.

'Drink this, Mr. Hugo,' she whispered, standing over him. He hesitated.
_'Drink it, I say, or must I throw it over you?'_

He sipped, and sipped again, obediently.

'Good, isn't it?' she questioned.

He looked up at her. He was stronger already.

'It's very good,' he said, with conviction. 'Now a bit of
bread-and-butter. Thanks.' Yes, the excellence and power of the Hugo tea
was not to be denied, and he was deeply glad in that moment that he
owne