could find nothing to do or no one to talk to,
so back I went to work--feeling a good deal like teacher's pet. About
four o'clock it was my business to tell Schmitz what supplies we were
out of and what and how much we'd need for supper. When I got back
from supper there were always trays of food to be put in the ice
chest, salads to be fixed, blackberries to dish out, celery to wash,
and the like. By the time that was done supper was on in our cafe.
That is, for some it was supper; for others, judging by the looks of
the trays which passed hurriedly by my compartment, stopping only
long enough for sliced lemon for the ice tea, it was surely dinner.
Dinner _de luxe_ now and then! Such delectable dishes! How did anybody
ever know their names enough to order them?

From 6 to 7.30 was the height of the supper rush. What a variable
thing our patrons made of it! Some evenings there would be a regular
run on celery salads, then for four nights not a single order.
Camembert cheese would reign supreme three nights in succession--not
another order for the rest of the week. Sometimes it seemed as if the
whole of creation sat without, panting for sliced tomatoes. The next
night stocked up in advance so as to keep no one waiting--not a human
being looked at a tomato.

At eight o'clock only stragglers remained to be fed, and my job was to
clear out the ice chest of all but two of each dish, send it upstairs
to the main kitchen, and then start scrubbing house. Schmitz let it be
known that one of the failings of her whose place I was now filling,
the one who was asked to leave the Friday night before the Monday
morning I appeared, was that she was not clean enough. At first, a
year and a half ago, she was cleanly and upright--that is, he spoke of
such uprightness as invariably follows cleanliness. But as time wore
on her habits of cleanliness wore off, and there were undoubtedly
corners in the ice box where her waning-in-enthusiasm fingers failed
to reach. But on a night when the New York thermometer ranges up
toward the nineties it is a pure and unadulterated joy to labor
inside an ice box. I scrubbed and rinsed and wiped until Schmitz
almost looked approving. Only it was congenital with Schmitz that he
never really showed approval of anything or anybody. Schmitz was the
kind (poor Mrs. Schmitz with her three months only of freedom) who
always had to change everything just a little. There would echo down
the line an order, "One Sw