It was not many minutes until Jolvin, the centre of conversation, came down to breakfast, unusually smart, his face wreathed in smiles.
“Good morning, people!” he said expansively, with a very full bow. “Isn’t it a lovely morning? Good-morning Stalton!”
“How do you do?” said Stalton crisply.
After taking his seat, the Englishman, noticing the silence of the table, thought perhaps to stir up conversation.
“You know,” he began, glancing at his dish, “these corn-flakes are really beastly grotesque things. In England one scarcely sees them. They are, I fancy, an expression of American commercialism which invades even the time-honored ritual of breakfast.”
Stalton suddenly dropped his spoon on the table.
“Well, I’m damned,” he said, simply, and once more took up his spoon, having received a stern look from Mrs. Manton.
Jolvin appeared not to have heard Stalton’s remark, but continued, “But, of course, America is too busy to cook porridge. There is no leisure or time for what one might call a comfortable dignity.”
“All this don’t jibe very well with what you usually say about England,” Stalton remarked. “Most of the time you seemed to hate the word.”