Page 138 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

ten hours a night in sheets smelling of lavender. B sent me a
fiver to pay my passage and get my clothes out of the pawn,
and as soon as the money arrived I gave one day’s notice and
left the restaurant. My leaving so suddenly embarrassed the
PATRON, for as usual he was penniless, and he had to pay
my wages thirty francs short. However he stood me a glass
of Courvoisier ‘48 brandy, and I think he felt that this made
up the difference. They engaged a Czech, a thoroughly com-
petent PLONGEUR, in my place, and the poor old cook
was sacked a few weeks later. Afterwards I heard that, with
two first-rate people in the kitchen, the PLONGEUR’S work
had been cut down to fifteen hours a day. Below that no one
could have cut it, short of modernizing the kitchen.

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