"Bell went ever so long ago."
"Didn't you hear it, Margie?" Ross inquired, much impressed at such absent-mindedness.
"No, Ross. Go in, all of you, and get clean," Marjorie ordered, glancing from one to another, feeling less like a victim under the eyes of her judges now that they too were in a position to be criticised.
"'Stead of eatin' much," Sandy had exhorted beforehand, "you've got to save."
If Marjorie had not been so occupied with her own perplexities, she must have noticed, first, the ravenous appetite of the four; next, the rapidity with which the bread-and-butter and cake disappeared. All the pockets were bulging when Ross was deputed to say grace, but the little boy's face looked very disconsolate indeed. Regardless of Sandy's frowns, after struggling through the formula, in accents of lingering unwillingness, he added—
"Ain't had a good tea—me hungry as hungry."
"Me, too," said Orme hopefully.
Marjorie glanced suspiciously round on the faces of her brothers, and then at the empty board. Even so preoccupied as she was, she could not but suspect that some means, other than natural ones, must have been used to banish all that food. And when the same thing happened the next afternoon also, when a more than usually varied abundance graced the table in honour of Barbara's visit, she spoke.
"I can't think," she was beginning to protest, when, to Sandy's delighted relief, Mrs. Lytchett was announced as being in the drawing-room, and asking specially for her.