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'It's a bit differint from the Royal Caff, where we got the sack, ain't it? remarked the Semi-drunk to Bill Bates as they made their way to the dining-room in response to the announcement that dinner was ready. 'Not arf! replied Bill. Rushton, with Didlum and Grinder and his other friends, sat at the round table near the piano.
You see it was just at this time that Mr. Smith's caff opened, and Mr. Smith came to Jeff's Woman and said he wanted seven dozen eggs a day, and wanted them handy, and so the hens are back, and more of them, and they exult so every morning over the eggs they lay that if you wanted to talk of Rockefeller in the barber shop you couldn't hear his name for the cackling.
It was all covered with such devices as Potage la Mariposa Filet Mignon a la proprietaire Cotellete a la Smith, and so on. But the greatest thing about the caff were the prices. Therein lay, as everybody saw at once, the hopeless simplicity of Mr. Smith. The prices stood fast at 25 cents a meal. You could come in and eat all they had in the caff for a quarter. "No, sir," Mr.
"Billy," he said to the desk clerk, "get a couple more and put them up on the roof of the caff behind the hotel. Wire down to the city and get a quotation on a hundred of them. Take them signs 'American Drinks' out of the bar. Put up noo ones with 'British Beer at all Hours'; clear out the rye whiskey and order in Scotch and Irish, and then go up to the printing office and get me them placards."
Anyway, here comes Mr. Smith himself with a huge basket of provender that would feed a factory. There must be sandwiches in that. I think I can hear them clinking. And behind Mr. Smith is the German waiter from the caff with another basket indubitably lager beer; and behind him, the bar-tender of the hotel, carrying nothing, as far as one can see.
Some of them said he ought to run for the town council, and others wanted to make him the Conservative candidate for the next Dominion election. The caff was a mere babel of voices, and even the Rats' Cooler was almost floated away from its moorings. And in the middle of it all, Mr.
So Hannah and me, we wants you to drap everythink rite outen your hands and kum home to us. Wot you want is a plenty of good kuntre air and water, and nun o your stifeld up streets and pizen pumps. And plenty o good kuntre eetin and drinkin and nun o your sickly messes. So you kum. Hannah and me is got a fine caff and fat lamm to kill soon as ever you git here. And lots o young chickins and duks.
And it was arranged that there would be a big lunch every day, to be held in Smith's caff, round the corner of Smith's Northern Health Resort and Home of the Wissanotti Angler, you know the place. The lunch was divided up into tables, with a captain for each table to see about things to drink, and of course all the tables were in competition with one another.
Then at night there was a big oyster supper in Smith's caff, with speeches, and the Mariposa band outside. And the queer thing was that the very next afternoon was the funeral of young Fizzlechip, and Dean Drone had to change the whole text of his Sunday sermon at two days' notice for fear of offending public sentiment.
Mr. Smith, of course, was in his glory. "What have you got to-day, Alf?" he would say, as he strolled over to the marquis. The name of the Chief was, I believe Alphonse, but "Alf" was near enough for Mr. Smith. The marquis would extend to the proprietor the menu, "Voila, m'sieu, la carte du jour." Mr. Smith, by the way, encouraged the use of the French language in the caff.
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