"An' he's here!" 'Biades nodded, over his half-lifted spoon, at
Nicky-Nan.
"Oh!" said 'Bert, "that isn' because of the War. That's to say
Good-bye, because he's turnin' out this week."
"For goodness, children, eat up your meal, an' stop talkin'!"
Mrs Penhaligon returned from the hearth to the table and set down a
dish of eggs and sizzling bacon. "Wherever you pick up such notions!
. . . You must excuse their manners, Mr Nanjivell."
But Nicky-Nan was staring at young 'Bert from under fiercely bent eyebrows.
"Who told you that I was turnin' out this week?" he demanded.
"I heard Mr Pamphlett say it, day before yesterday. He was round with Squinny Gilbert—"
"Fie now, your manners get worse and worse!" his mother reproved him.
"Who be you, to talk of the builder-man without callin' him
'Mister'?"
"Well then, he was round with Mister Squinny Gilbert, lookin' over the back o' the house. I heard him say as you was done for, and would have to clear inside the next two or three days—"
"He did—did he?" Nicky-Nan was arising in ungovernable rage; but
Mrs Penhaligon coaxed him to sit down.
"There now!" she said soothingly. "Take un' eat, Mr Nanjivell! The Good Lord bids us be like the lilies o' the field, and I can vouch the eggs to be new-laid. Sufficient for the day. . . . An' here 'tis the Sabbath, an' to-morrow Bank Holiday. Put the man out o' your thoughts, an' leave the Lord to provide."