II

OF MENTAL STANDPOINTS

'E parea posta lor diversa legge.'
DANTE.

The Crevequers, as they had anticipated, did eat too much at lunch--a
good deal too much. They cast, occasionally, wondering and interested
glances round the dining-room, and took in the fact that every one at
all the little tables was also eating too much. It was borne upon them
that this exorbitance, a strange incident in their own lives, was to
these others a daily occurrence. Every day at one o'clock the
dining-room at Parker's, the dining-rooms at all the hotels of its
genus, were filled with Anglo-Saxons and a few others, all sitting round
little tables, and all eating too much. Then again at dinner-time....
The impressiveness of the thought widened their eyes, filling them with
an awestruck solemnity. To eat too much, a good deal too much,
twice--nay, thrice--a day (for visions of the Anglo-Saxon breakfast
haunted them: one had honey, one ordered omelette) during a period of
weeks and months--it required thinking over quietly afterwards. At
present, face to face with the amazing succession of the courses, the
contemplation of all it meant made one a little dizzy. The Crevequers
took all the courses; they would not have missed one; they intended to
see this thing through. As they ate they talked stammeringly. Mrs.
Venables was struck by the melancholy of their pondering eyes. Her
interest--she had an immense fund of it--was gathering itself together
to pour itself unstintedly forth on Maddan Crevequer's children. Her son
and her daughter and her niece watched the gathering; it was a familiar
process to them. The son watched it with languid amusement; the daughter
with stolid unconcern (she was a bored child of eighteen); the niece
with eyes inscrutably remote. The Crevequers were copy; they came to be
studied, to be drawn out; they responded to the process with their usual
affability. They answered questions as to their way of life, their
friends, the customs of the Neapolitan poor, their religion. Mrs.
Venables, as she said, found the Roman Catholic standpoint quite
immensely interesting. The Crevequers groped uncomprehendingly after the
reason of such interest, and gave it up. They were, however, quite ready
to answer the questions put to them; it seemed a harmless craze enough.
Mrs. Venables had been to Mass the day before, and had, she affirmed,
been much struck by the impressive contrast of the ordered stateliness
of the servi