.
The waitress plainly had not looked for them, and for a time found their
presence so incredible that she would not acknowledge the rattling that
Basil was obliged to make on his glass. Then it appeared that the cook
would not believe in them, and he did not send them, till they were quite
faint, the peppery and muddy draught which impudently affected to be
coffee, the oily slices of fugacious potatoes slipping about in their
shallow dish and skillfully evading pursuit, the pieces of beef that
simulated steak, the hot, greasy biscuit, steaming evilly up into the
face when opened, and then soddening into masses of condensed dyspepsia.

The wedding-journeyers looked at each other with eyes of sad amaze. They
bowed themselves for a moment to the viands, and then by an equal impulse
refrained. They were sufficiently young, they were happy, they were
hungry; nature is great and strong, but art is greater, and before these
triumphs of the cook at the Albany depot appetite succumbed. By a
terrible tour de force they swallowed the fierce and turbid liquor in
their cups, and then speculated fantastically upon the character and
history of the materials of that breakfast.

Presently Isabel paused, played a little with her knife, and, after a
moment looked up at her husband with an arch regard and said: "I was
just thinking of a small station somewhere in the South of France where
our train once stopped for breakfast. I remember the freshness and
brightness of everything on the little tables,--the plates, the napkins,
the gleaming half-bottles of wine. They seemed to have been preparing
that breakfast for us from the beginning of time, and we were hardly
seated before they served us with great cups of 'cafe-au-lait', and the
sweetest rolls and butter; then a delicate cutlet, with an unspeakable
gravy, and potatoes,--such potatoes! Dear me, how little I ate of it! I
wish, for once, I'd had your appetite, Basil; I do indeed."

She ended with a heartless laugh, in which, despite the tragical contrast
her words had suggested, Basil finally joined. So much amazement had
probably never been got before out of the misery inflicted in that place;
but their lightness did not at all commend them. The waitress had not
liked it from the first, and had served them with reluctance; and the
proprietor did not like it, and kept his eye upon them as if he believed
them about to escape without payment. Here, then, they had enforced a
great fact of