The Golden Peaks Read Free Page B

then. Inga will teach you, but you will be under the authority of Johanna the housekeeper, and any problems you have should be taken to her. If necessary, she will pass them on to myself or Mr. St. Pierre.”
    “Thank you,” said Celia. “And when do I start? ”
    “Ah, that is another thing. We need somebody right away. I know it is rather sudden for you, so soon after your arrival; but if you will start at once, it would be better. You will go to Johanna about uniforms, and she will see you are fitted out.”
    Celia was about to protest, but she thought better of it, and quietly agreed to Anneliese’s suggestion. She had hoped for a few days of grace; a few days to become acclimatized, to explore her surroundings, to visit Dorothy and see how she was settling down. But she had already gathered the impression that Mr. St. Pierre was rather a formidable person, and she was in no position to a sk , or expect, favors. So she said she would see Johanna in the morning, and take up her duties straight away.
    The next day she moved from her room to a fresh one at the top of the hotel, she was fitted with uniforms by Johanna, she was taken under the wing of I nga, and given a preliminary briefing on her future duties. “Tomorrow,” said Anneliese, “you start work.”
    As soon as Celia started, she discovered one very agreeable thing—that the rest of the staff was completely unselfconscious with her, and treated her with a natural friendliness that was very cheering. The politeness that comes so naturally to the Swiss resulted in so many good mornings that Celia, afraid of appearing curt or cold, thought she must have duplicated hers many times. It quickly apparent that the whole staff worked together in a friendly atmosphere, under the genial but thorough supervision of Johanna, the housekeeper.
    Johanna was a middle-aged woman of some presence. She was responsible for the actual running of the hotel, excepting only the cooking and the bar. There were three male cooks, Gustave, Hans and Willi, supreme in the kitchen, with girls under them who prepared vegetables, washed up, and did a thousand odd jobs. Willi was quiet and self-effacing and rarely spoke. Gustave and Hans were jolly, and very soon constituted themselves a small admiration society for Celia. The room maids and waitresses came under Johanna’s authority, but of the four waitresses, Inga enjoyed the privileges of seniority, having been much longer at the Hotel Rotihorn than the others. Inga was very considerate of Celia in the first tiring days, and showed her how she could save herself work by thinking ahead.
    This, Celia was soon very glad to do, for, as she had expected, the work was extremely tiring at first, and the most tiring thing was the continual carrying of trays backwards and forward from the kitchen to the dining room. Breakfast was a comparatively easy time, since almost everybody took only the Continental breakfast, and the meal was spread over the two hours between seven-thirty and nine-thirty. Only two girls were on duty at that time. Lunch and dinner times were the busiest and the hardest, and Celia at first found the serving difficult, balancing a dish on one hand, while she captured the food between spoon and fork with the other, and transferred it to the plates. Two afternoons a week she was on tea duty, and this was also light, since many guests did not take tea at all; two afternoons were free for her; and on the remaining days she cleaned silver, arranged flowers, helped the sewing maid mend linen, or folded napkins into glasses for dinner time. Laying tables took a large part of the day, and sorting table l in e n for the laundrymaids was also a daily task.
    At the end of a week, Celia’s arms and legs ached so badly that she began to wonder herself if she could stand it. Her tired muscles, unused to the kind of strain put upon them now, protested at the lightest load, the shortest walk. At every possible opportunity, she went up to