Page:Encounters (Bowen).djvu/23

 Did he really bolt his food and make, perhaps, disgusting noises with his mouth?

"That's why I always say we'd rather breakfast early—all of us, even the ones who haven't necessarily got to rush. It's so much homier, one feels, than rough-and-tumble modern breakfast nowadays. Everybody sort of rushing in and scrambling and snatching and making grabs at things off a table at the side. There's nothing so homely," said Mrs. Russel with conscious brilliance, "as a comfortable sit-down family to breakfast."

"My God!" said Jervis irritably, "there's going to be another strike on that damned railway—they're cutting down the trains again. Why pretend railways are a convenience—that's what I should like to know?"

No one could tell him.

He pushed his chair back from the table, impatiently, and crossed his legs.

"Pore old thing, then," trilled Hilary. "Diddums wazzums cwoss."

"They're not taking off the eight-forty-seven, are they?"

"Not the eight-forty-seven?"