Babylon. Volume 2. Allen Grant

      CHAPTER XVIII. HIRAM IN WONDERLAND

      Just a week after Colin Churchill reached Rome, three passengers by an American steamer stood in the big gaudy refreshment-room at Lime Street Station, Liverpool, waiting for the hour for the up express to start for London.

      ‘We’d better have a little lunch before we get off,’ St in Churchill said to his two companions, ‘Don’t you think so, Mr. Audouin?’

      Audouin nodded. ‘For my part,’ he said, ‘I shall have a Bath bun and a glass of ale. They remind one so delightfully of England, Will you give me a glass of bitter, please.’

      Hiram drew back a little in surprise. He gazed at the gorgeous young lady who pulled the handle of the beer-engine (of course he had never seen a woman serving drink before), and then he glanced inquiringly at Sam Churchill. ‘Do tell me,’ he whispered in an awe-struck undertone; ‘is that a barmaid?’ Sam hardly took in the point of the question for the moment, it seemed so natural to him to see a girl drawing beer at an English refreshment-room, though in the land of his adoption that function is always performed by a male attendant, known as a saloon-keeper; but he answered unconcernedly: ‘Well, yes, she’s about that, I reckon, though I dare say she wouldn’t admire at you to call her so.’ Hiram looked with all his eyes agog upon the gorgeous young lady. ‘Well,’ he said slowly, half to himself, ‘that’s just charming. A barmaid! Why it’s exactly the same as if it were in “Tom Jones” or “Roderick Random.”’

      Sam Churchill’s good-humoured face expanded slowly into a broad smile. That was a picturesque point of view of barmaids which he had never before conceived as possible ‘What’ll you take, Hiram?’ he asked. ‘This is a pork-pie here; will you try it?’

      ‘A pork-pie!’ Hiram cried, enchanted.

      ‘A pork-pie! You don’t mean to say so! Will I try it? I should think I would, rather. Why, you know, Sam, one reads about pork-pies in Dickens!’