Page:Herbert Jenkins - Patricia Brent Spinster.djvu/86

 found yourself toying with a herring at dinner, you knew it was a Tuesday, just as you knew it was Friday from the Scotch broth placed before you.

Nobody seemed to mind the dreary reiteration, because everybody was so occupied in keeping up appearances. Sunday was the day of reckoning and retrospection. "Were they getting full value for their money?" was the unuttered question. There were whisperings and grumblings, sometimes complaints. Then there was another aspect. Each guest had to enquire if the expenditure were justified by income. All these things, like the weekly mending, were kept for Sundays.

By tea-time the atmosphere was one of unrest. Mr. Sefton returned from the Park disappointed, Miss Sikkum from Sunday-school, breathless from her flight before some alleged admirer, Patricia from her walk, conscious of a dissatisfaction she could not define. Mr. Cordal awoke unrefreshed, Mrs. Craske-Morton emerged from her "boudoir," where she balanced the week's accounts, convinced that ruin stared her in the face owing to the tonic qualities of Bayswater air, and Mr. Bolton emerged from Lloyd's News facetious. Miss Wangle was acid, Mrs. Mosscrop-Smythe ultra-forbearing, whilst Mrs. Barnes found it impossible to decide between a heart-cake and a rusk. Only Mrs. Hamilton, at work upon her inevitable knitting, seemed human and content.

On returning to Galvin House Patricia had