From: Snook (The Elder) at Home

On the Intransigence of One's Situation.

Lenore and I were at that Habsburgian place last night, and I had the rather awkward experience of running into our waitress when I was downstairs of the dining room. (Where the washrooms are, in case you hadn't guessed.)

Awkward because I felt uncannily as though I were backstage at a theatrical performance, and that I was under some obligation to take the girl by her elbows, look her squarely in the eye, and say something along the lines of: Sterling performance, sweet. We're all drooling all over ourselves up there. I resisted the urge, of course, but I know that she was similarly discombobulated by the meeting, and it took some doing on both our parts to manage eye contact once we had resumed our respective places upon the boards.

... Whatever idiots might say of the so-called egalitarian society, it seems incontrovertible to me that Upstairs and Downstairs will always keep their places; that the twain might (only) sometimes meet in a thin bit of burlesque.