Fresh complications instantly ensued, which cruelly cut short the
agreeable exercise of uncontrolled laughter. It was obvious that one
of the waiters was about to fall. And in the enforced tranquillity
of a new dread every dyspeptic person in the house was deliciously
conscious of a sudden freedom from indigestion due to the agreeable
exercise of uncontrolled laughter, and wished fervently that he could
laugh like that after every meal. The waiter fell; he fell through
the large violet hat and disappeared beneath the surface of a sea of
crockery. The other waiter fell too, but the sea was not deep enough
to drown a couple of them. Then the customers, recovering themselves,
decided that they must not be outclassed in this competition of havoc,
and they overthrew the table and everything on it, and all the other
tables and everything on all the other tables. The audience was now
a field of artillery which nothing could silence. The waiters arose,
and, opening the sideboard, disclosed many hundreds of unsuspected
plates of all kinds, ripe for smashing. Niagaras of plates surged on
to the stage. All four performers revelled and wallowed in smashed
plates. New supplies of plates were constantly being produced from
strange concealments, and finally the tables and chairs were broken to
pieces, and each object on the walls was torn down and flung in bits
on to the gorgeous general debris, to the top of which clambered the
violet hat, necklace and yellow petticoat, brandishing one single
little plate, whose life had been miraculously spared.
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