mean, I've never--well, hardly ever--had any lessons. No, nor my voice.
It's just ear. Mrs. P---- a friend of maine says I've got a very quick
ear." Every now and then Sally was betrayed into Nosey-like refinement.
She fought against it from an instinctive feeling that it was
meretricious. But at the same time she was speaking with instinctive
care, so as to avoid Cockney phrases, and pronunciations, and tones. She
wanted him to think her--something that she called "nice." They walked
the length of Regent Street, chatting thus; and at last reached the
gilded Rezzonico, where there were liveried men who seized Gaga's hat
and stick, and maitres d'hotel who hurried them this way and that in
search of a table in the crowded, din-filled room. The walls were
covered with enormous mirrors which were surrounded by gaudy mouldings.
Tables were everywhere, and all appeared to be occupied. Men and women
in evening dress, men and women in morning clothes, some of the women
painted, others ordinary respectable members of the bourgeoisie, were
sitting and dining and smoking and chattering loudly. Glasses,
cigarettes, bottles, all sorts of dishes, strewn upon the tables, caught
Sally's bewildered eye. Above all, a scratching orchestra rasped out a
selection from one of Verdi's operas. A huge unmanageable noise of talk
and laughter swelled the torrent of sound. Deafened, her nerve
destroyed, Sally timidly followed the apparently aimless wanderings
of Gaga and the maitres d'hotel, her shoulders stiff with
self-consciousness in face of so many staring eyes and well-fed,
well-dressed creatures; and at last they found a table. It was a bad
table, in the middle of the room, near the band and the cash desk and a
sort of sideboard into which bottles were ceaselessly dumped. A very old
waiter, with white side whiskers like those of the late Emperor Franz
Josef, very foreign and therefore particularly liable to misconstrue
Gaga's stammered orders, served them with hors d'oeuvres, slashing down
upon Sally's plate inconceivable mixtures of white and red and green
fragments; and then hurried away as fast as his bunions allowed. Gaga
was left to choose the wine, which he managed to do after many
consultations with Sally and the waiter, and many changes of mind upon
his own account. Sally riddled all his uncertainties with a merciless
eye. He apparently knew a wine-list when he saw one; but his nervousness
was so palpable that she was inclined even to