"Why?" asked Harold.
Everybody felt that Harold's question was one that should not be answered.
"You wouldn't understand, darling," said his mother; and the dining-room became tense with mystery.
"Of course, if we could have dinner put forward half an hour," said Laurence, dragging the conversation out of the slough of sex, "we could avail ourselves of the moon."
"Yes, you see," Edith put in eagerly, "it wouldn't be so dark with the moon."
Laurence knitted his brow at this and his wife hastened to add that an earlier dinner would bring Frida's bed-time much nearer to its normal hour.
"The point is that I have a great deal to talk over with John," Laurence irritably explained, "and that," he looked as if he would have liked to add "Frida's bed-time can go to the devil," but he swallowed the impious dedication and crumbled his bread.
Finally, notwithstanding that everybody felt very full of roast beef and scarlet-runners, it was decided to dine at half-past six instead of half-past seven.
"Poor Papa, I remember," said old Mrs. Touchwood, "always liked to dine at half-past three. That gave him a nice long morning for his patients and time to smoke his cigar after dinner before he opened the dispensary in the evening. Supper was generally cold unless he anticipated a night call, in which case we had soup."
All were glad that the twentieth century had arrived, and they smiled sympathetically at the old lady, who, feeling that her anecdote had scored a hit, embarked upon another about being taken to the Great Exhibition when she was eleven years old, which lasted right through the pudding, perhaps because it was trifle, and Harold did not feel inclined to lose a mouthful by rash interruptions.