. Because, as the head waiter
will tell you, if servants were allowed to reserve a table during the
big rush at seven o'clock, why not messenger boys? And it would
certainly never do to have half a dozen large tables securely held by
minute messengers while the hungry and impatient waited their turn at
the door.

But Walters looked as much like a gentleman as did many of the diners;
and when he seated himself at the largest table and told the waiter to
serve for a party of eight or ten, he did it with such an air that the
head waiter came over himself and took the orders. Walters knew quite
as much about ordering a dinner as did his master; and when Van Bibber
was too tired to make out the menu, Walters would look over the card
himself and order the proper wines and side dishes; and with such a
carelessly severe air and in such a masterly manner did he discharge
this high function that the waiters looked upon him with much respect.

But respect even from your equals and the satisfaction of having your
fellow-servants mistake you for a member of the Few Hundred are not
enough. Walters wanted more. He wanted the further satisfaction of
enjoying the delicious dishes he had ordered; of sitting as a coequal
with the people for whom he had kept a place; of completing the
deception he practised only up to the point where it became most
interesting.

It certainly was trying to have to rise with a subservient and
unobtrusive bow and glide out unnoticed by the real guests when they
arrived; to have to relinquish the feast just when the feast should
begin. It would not be pleasant, certainly, to sit for an hour at a
big empty table, ordering dishes fit only for epicures, and then, just
as the waiters bore down with the Little Neck clams, so nicely iced and
so cool and bitter-looking, to have to rise and go out into the street
to a table d'hote around the corner.

This was Walters's state of mind when Mr. Van Bibber told him for the
hundredth time to keep a table for him for three at Delmonico's.
Walters wrapped his severe figure in a frock-coat and brushed his hair,
and allowed himself the dignity of a walking-stick. He would have
liked to act as a substitute in an evening dress-suit, but Van Bibber
would not have allowed it. So Walters walked over to Delmonico's and
took a table near a window, and said that the other gentlemen would
arrive later. Then he looked at his watch and ordered the dinner. It
was just the