THE LADY CASHIER.
les, sir, you may, by inspecting the timesheet in my office, see that for twenty years I have never been one minute late, ana yet I may Bay and believe that punctuality is an execrable vice. Who does not despise the man who always arrives on time, appearing just when one is trying to finish some occupation, and watch in hand, saying blandly, "Am I not punctual?" Yes, sir, after serving as a regulator for all the clocks in my neighbourhood for twenty years, I repeat punctuality is execrable. I am cured of it, for it was the oause of the greatest disappointment of my life, Listen, and judge for yourself. For seven long years I had breakfasted at one restaurant; every morning at exactly five minutes past eleven I opened the door and at precisely five minutes before noon I closed it.
It is useless to describe the lady cashier, suffice it to say that from the instant I tasted my first cup of coffee in that restaurant she reigned in my heart. Did my glances express my feelings? 1 cannot say, but I know that for seven years we loved in Bilence. It took just that length of time for me to get near enough to speak to her, as I had to work my way from table No. 7, which I first occupied, up to table No. 1, which stood next to the cashier's desk. I was too puntual to arrive an instant earlior at the restaurant than the six other gueEts, and as they were as exact as I, I was obliged to employ strategy to dislodge them. The first man, at table No. 6, was easily disposed of. While waiting to be served, 1 amused myself in cutting corks, and the sound set his teeth on edge and annoyed him so much that he went into the next room, and 1 took his place. Six months after, chance came to my aid and relieved me of No. 5. A waiter broke a goblet and spilled coffee on the table, and the oocupant, being superstitious, insisted on changing his seat, so I moved up again.
In the course of the next two meals I succeeded in making myself abnoxious to No. 4, who had a habit of taking a little nap immediately after breakfast. I contrived, by tilting my chair, to knock his repeatedly, so at last he got up and left in a fury. . No. 3 held out only one day against me. I made bread and butter black with caviare and soaked it in my coffee, and the sight of the mess made my neighbour so sick tbat he fled precipitately, and hardly had time to get out of the room. Then I sat next to No. 2. A.h, I shall never forget that man ! It took me four years to get rid of him, and but for the encouraging glances of my angel I should have given up in despair. Perhaps you may wonder why I did not come to breakfast two hours earlier, when I would have had my choice of tables. That would have been a simple matter to most men, but I was a viotim to the folly of punctuality. T» return to No. 2. I tried cork outtings, putting caviare in my coffee, and dancing about on my chair; but it was all in vain. Then I discovered the man was stone deaf besides being blind in one eye. I decided, therefore, to attack him through his pocket, and accordingly I made a practice of surreptitiously putting caps, glasses, and decanters close to his elbow, on the blind side, and he invariably knocked them down and had to pay damages. Every day there was a heap of broken glass anc china on the floor between us, and every day he paid the cost uncomplainingly. The restaurant keeper profited largely by these accidents, for he had the afflicted guest served with cracked and broken ware and charged him the price of new on its being demolished. At the end of four years, No. 2 had destroyed as much table ware as would suffice to set up in housekeeping all the savages in Oceanica, those people who have so few luxuries that one pair of gloves is sufficient to make clothes for ten men. Poor No. 21 I pity him now, for 1 have learned that the reason he clung so tenaciously to his post was that he too adored the lady cashier. I had no mercy on him, however, and being at the end of my resources had resolved to put the police on his track, when he was one day knocked down and killed by one of those butchers' waggons which are allowed, I do not know why, to rush through Paris streets at full speed. The next morning I seated myself at table No. 2, where, although not quite within the promised land, I enjoyed its delicious fragrance. I breathed the odour of the orange flower water which Bhe poured into little hideous onion shaped bottles. Only one obstacle now separated me from ber, my beloved. It was No. 1. I determined to orush him, and from that day war was. declared between us. He was a terrible man, formerly a captain of gendarmes, strong as a Turk, with heavy beard and moustache. There was a certain amount of gallantry and sentiment, however, under his rough exterior, for he used to fix his great eyes on the lady cashier, and repeat, hour after hour, these words, " I am like the ivy $ I die where I attaoh myself." The prospect did not console me in the least, for he looked as if he would live to be a hundred. I tried to win the monster by relating amusing tales and making puns, but he suddenly dampened my ardour by saying, as he twisted bis moustache fiercely : "Are you not aware, sir, that it was owing to his wasting vime in making puns that Grouchy arrived too late at Waterloo ?"
[ This piece of historical information astonf ished me not a little, and I felt that if Franoe could mislay her code for twentyfour hours I would joyfully stab the terrible captain—in the back. At last heaven took pitp on me and my love and sent an epidemic sickness wbioh carrried off my rival. Immediately I installed myself at table No. 1. I was next to her. I contemplated her charming figure above the desk, her blond hair, her rosebud mouth! Seven years had, indeed, made some alterations in her charms, but I saw her only with the eyes of that first cup of coffee. I cannot describe our mutual emotions at that moment so long waited for; joy nearly suffocated as and turned our brains, 1 dipped my napkin into the decanter and poured coffee into my pocketbook, while she piled up s.quq on plates and dropped lamps of sugar into the money drawer. Only a few words were needed to bind us to each other, and no one else in the room suspected anything, when, affecting to read the hatter's name inside my hat, 1 murmured from the depths of the lining:
" 1 love thee." She, while apparently busy in drying a punch bowl, replied;
"Hove thee."
"Be my wife 1" 1 added. «' To-morrow, at my notary's, at thirty-five minutes past nine." The next morning, at the minute agreed on, I was with my notary, and while he prepared the papers, I tried to describe my beloved.
" You will see her," I cried in an ecstaoy, "she is blonde, slender, beautiful—she has the hand of a queen and the throat of a goddess! For seven long years I have loved her." Suddenly the notary asked in a careless tone:
"Is she short or tall?" This simple question overwhelmed me, and I could only answer:
•"' I do not know." " What!" he exclaimed. " You have loved her for seven years and you do not know whether she is short or tall ?" "It is the solemn truth. I have never seen her except in the restaurant. lam so exact and punctual that I have never been able to devote any time to her except in my breakfast hour—that is, from five minutes past eleven to five minutes before noon, and all that time she is seated behind a desk, so that I have never seen her lower than her waist."
Aa I finished speaking the door opened and my bride appeared. With a cry of dismay I fell unoonscious. The beloved of my heart, the angel of my dreams, possessor of two wooden legs.
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Bibliographic details
Golden Bay Argus, Volume 2, Issue 6, 8 July 1892, Page 6
Word Count
1,445THE LADY CASHIER. Golden Bay Argus, Volume 2, Issue 6, 8 July 1892, Page 6
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