. As Jackson had cautiously felt his way to the needs of
their public in the enlargement and rearrangement of the hotel, the two
housewives had watchfully studied, not merely the demands, but the
half-conscious instincts of their guests, and had responded to them
simply and adequately, in the spirit of Jackson's exterior and structural
improvements. The walls of the new rooms were left unpapered and their
floors uncarpeted; there were thin rugs put down; the wood-work was
merely stained. Westover found that he need not to ask especially for
some hot dish at night; there was almost the abundance of a dinner,
though dinner was still at one o'clock.
Mrs. Durgin asked him the first day if he would not like to go into the
serving-room and see it while they were serving dinner. She tried to
conceal her pride in the busy scene--the waitresses pushing in through
one valve of the double-hinged doors with their empty trays, and out
through the other with the trays full laden; delivering their dishes with
the broken victual at the wicket, where the untouched portions were put
aside and the rest poured into the waste; following in procession along
the reeking steamtable, with its great tanks of soup and vegetables,
where, the carvers stood with the joints and the trussed fowls smoking
before them, which they sliced with quick sweeps of their blades, or
waiting their turn at the board where the little plates with portions of
fruit and dessert stood ready. All went regularly on amid a clatter of
knives and voices and dishes; and the clashing rise and fall of the wire
baskets plunging the soiled crockery into misty depths, whence it came up
clean and dry without the touch of finger or towel. Westover could not
deny that there were elements of the picturesque in it, so that he did
not respond quite in kind to Jeff's suggestion--"Scene for a painter, Mr.
Westover."
The young fellow followed satirically at his mother's elbow, and made a
mock of her pride in it, trying to catch Westover's eye when she led him
through the kitchen with its immense range, and introduced him to a new
chef, who wiped his hand on his white apron to offer it to Westover.
"Don't let him get away without seeing the laundry, mother," her son
jeered at a final air of absent-mindedness in her, and she defiantly
accepted his challenge.
"Jeff's mad because he wasn't consulted," she explained, "and because we
don't run the house like his one-horse European hotels
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