"I wish you wouldn't set me against my food," she retorted peevishly, slicing the top from the offensive egg and peering timidly into it. Then with a smile: "Perhaps it's like the curate's egg."
"Don't, Letitia!" I cried indignantly, "I loathe that alleged joke. It is so silly and so played out. Besides, it was never meant for morning use. There are some things that it is criminal to jest about—eggs, and Parsifal, and cooks, and the Passion play," I added desperately.
I was determined that I would not taste my egg until I saw how Letitia took to hers. They were probably of the same brand. It was perhaps cowardly of me to let a frail little woman explore the mysteries of an unguessed egg, but I was in a thoroughly perverse mood. I watched her stolidly as she dipped in her spoon, stirred up the contents, and transferred a portion of them to her mouth. Nothing happened. She did not change color and I realized that all was well. For in the case of the restaurant egg: Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûte.
The tea tasted like boiled hay. It was called English breakfast tea, probably because the English would never think of drinking it, and if they did, they would never drink it at breakfast time. But it was hot and wet—two qualities that are sufficient for those who have not mastered the sublime art of tea-drinking. Letitia scarcely touched her breakfast. She immersed herself in the advertising columns of the morning newspaper, and was quite hidden behind the sheet. I was in that odious humor when, to be looked at as I ate, was unendurable—something simply not to be borne with equanimity. I was glad that Letitia couldn't see me, for while she wasn't looking I did very nicely, and ate my team of boiled eggs with relish! If Letitia had been looking at me, I should have left them both. One can not always account for the morning mood. And yet I have never been called a "crank."
"Archie," she said suddenly (and I quickly hid the egg-shells so that she should not remark upon my strangely-found appetite), "I think I've got it at last. It really looks as though there were a way out of our difficulties. But I do wish, dear boy, that you would try to eat."
She glanced at my plate. She saw the egg-shells. The rolls, butter, tea, had all disappeared. I felt a flush mount to my brow. Had I been detected in the commission of a crime, I could not have looked more uncomfortable.
"Oh, I see you have managed to do very well," she said in a pleased voice, without a vestige of sarcasm. "In fact"—with a smile—"if you do as well as that, without an appetite, I am quite unable to imagine what you would do with one. You are a healthy boy—healthy but silly."
"Well, Letitia," I murmured abjectly, "you were reading, and paying no attention to me—I might have been down at the Battery for all you cared—so I had to do something in self-defense."
"Don't apologize," said Letitia, and this time there was an intonation of ill-timed jocularity in her voice. "I am glad you were hungry, and I wish that I had been. I've eaten nothing, and you don't even notice it. You don't urge me to eat. It doesn't matter."