So they made their way to the 'Shilling Tea-room.' Having paid at
the entrance, they were admitted to feed freely on all that lay
before them. With difficulty could a seat be found in the huge room;
the uproar of voices was deafening. On the tables lay bread, butter,
cake in hunches, tea-pots, milk-jugs, sugar-basins--all things to
whomso could secure them in the conflict. Along the gangways coursed
perspiring waiters, heaping up giant structures of used plates and
cups, distributing clean utensils, and miraculously sharp in
securing the gratuity expected from each guest as he rose satiate.
Muscular men in aprons wheeled hither the supplies of steaming fluid
in immense cans on heavy trucks. Here practical joking found the
most graceful of opportunities, whether it were the deft direction
of a piece of cake at the nose of a person sitting opposite, or the
emptying of a saucer down your neighbour's back, or the ingenious
jogging of an arm which was in the act of raising a full tea-cup.
Now and then an ill-conditioned fellow, whose beer disagreed with
him, would resent some piece of elegant trifling, and the waiters
would find it needful to request gentlemen not to fight until they
had left the room.
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