Chateau
Lamont, is it not, of '61?" It was Chateau of something-or-other,
and of some year, but Breen was too wise to correct him. He
supposed it was Chateau Lafitte--that is, he had instructed
Parkins to serve that particular wine and vintage.
"Either '61 or '63," replied Breen with the air of positive
certainty. (How that boy in the white apron, who had watched the
boss paste on the labels, would have laughed had he been under the
table.)
Further down the cloth Hodges, the epicure, was giving his views
as to the proper way of serving truffles. A dish had just passed,
with an underpinning of crust. Hodges's early life had qualified
him as an expert in cooking, as well as in wines: Ten years in a
country store swapping sugar for sausages and tea for butter and
eggs; five more clerk in a Broadway cloth house, with varied
boarding-house experiences (boiled mutton twice a week, with
pudding on Sundays); three years junior partner, with a room over
Delmonico's; then a rich wife and a directorship in a bank (his
father-in-law was the heaviest depositor); next, one year in
Europe and home, as vice-president, and at the present writing
president of one of the certify-as-early-as-ten-o' clock-in-the-
morning kind of banks, at which Peter would so often laugh.
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