Penelopes English Experiences | Page 4

and
drinking, if you judged her merely by this weekly statement at the
hotel.
When she has reached the point of dividing the whole bill into three

parts, so that each person may know what is her share, she adds the
three together, expecting, not unnaturally, to get the total amount of the
bill. Not at all. She never comes within thirty shillings of the desired
amount, and she is often three or four guineas to the good or to the bad.
One of her difficulties lies in her inability to remember that in English
money it makes a difference where you place a figure, whether, in the
pound, shilling, or pence column. Having been educated on the theory
that a six is a six the world over, she charged me with sixty shillings'
worth of Apollinaris in one week. I pounced on the error, and found
that she had jotted down each pint in the shilling instead of in the pence
column.
After Francesca had broken ground on the bill in this way, Salemina,
on the next leisure evening, draws a large armchair under the lamp and
puts on her eye-glasses. We perch on either arm, and, after identifying
our own extras, we summon the butler to identify his. There are a good
many that belong to him or to the landlady; of that fact we are always
convinced before he proves to the contrary. We can never see (until he
makes us see) why the breakfasts on the 8th should be four shillings
each because we had strawberries, if on the 8th we find strawberries
charged in the luncheon column and also in the column of desserts and
ices. And then there are the peripatetic lemon squashes. Dawson calls
them 'still' lemon squashes because they are made with water, not with
soda or seltzer or vichy, but they are particularly badly named. 'Still'
forsooth! when one of them will leap from place to place, appearing
now in the column of mineral waters and now in the spirits, now in the
suppers, and again in the sundries. We might as well drink Chablis or
Pommery by the time one of these still squashes has ceased wandering,
and charging itself at each station. The force of Dawson's intellect is
such that he makes all this moral turbidity as clear as crystal while he
remains in evidence. His bodily presence has a kind of illuminating
power, and all the errors that we fancy we have found he traces to their
original source, which is always in our suspicious and inexperienced
minds. As he leaves the room he points out some proof of unexampled
magnanimity on the part of the hotel; as, for instance, the fact that the
management has not charged a penny for sending up Miss Monroe's
breakfast trays. Francesca impulsively presses two shillings into his

honest hand and remembers afterwards that only one breakfast was
served in our bedrooms during that particular week, and that it was
mine, not hers.
The Paid Out column is another source of great anxiety. Francesca is a
person who is always buying things unexpectedly and sending them
home C.O.D.; always taking a cab and having it paid at the house;
always sending telegrams and messages by hansom, and notes by the
Boots.
I should think, were England on the brink of a war, that the Prime
Minister might expect in his office something of the same hubbub,
uproar, and excitement that Francesca manages to evolve in this private
hotel. Naturally she cannot remember her expenditures, or
extravagances, or complications of movement for a period of seven
days; and when she attacks the Paid Out column she exclaims in a
frenzy, 'Just look at this! On the 11th they say they paid out three
shillings in telegrams, and I was at Maidenhead!' Then because we love
her and cannot bear to see her charming forehead wrinkled, we
approach from our respective corners, and the conversation is
something like this:-
Salemina. "You were not at Maidenhead on the 11th, Francesca; it was
the 12th."
Francesca. "Oh! so it was; but I sent no telegrams on the 11th."
Penelope. "Wasn't that the day you wired Mr. Drayton that you couldn't
go to the Zoo?"
Francesca. "Oh yes, so I did: and to Mr. Godolphin that I could. I
remember now; but that's only two."
Salemina. "How about the hairdresser whom you stopped coming from
Kensington?"
Francesca. "Yes, she's the third, that's all right then; but what in the
world is this twelve shillings?"

Penelope. "The foolish amber beads you were persuaded into buying in
the Burlington Arcade?"
Francesca. "No, those were seven shillings, and they are splitting
already."
Salemina. "Those soaps and sachets you bought on the way home the
day that you left your purse in the cab?"