It was all very colourless and odd.
Gerald returned, saying, “I can’t stand your cook. What’s she want to ask me questions for? I can’t stand talking to servants. I say, ‘If I speak to you, well and good’—and it’s another thing besides if she were pretty.”
“Well, I hope our ugly cook will have lunch ready in a minute,” said Agnes. “We’re frightfully unpunctual this morning, and I daren’t say anything, because it was the same yesterday, and if I complain again they might leave. Poor Rickie must be starved.”
“Why, the Silts gave me all these sandwiches and I’ve never eaten them. They always stuff one.”
“And you thought you’d better, eh?” said Mr. Dawes, “in case you weren’t stuffed here.”
Miss Pembroke, who house-kept somewhat economically, looked annoyed.
The voice of Mr. Pembroke was now heard calling from the house, “Frederick! Frederick! My dear boy, pardon me. It was an important letter about the Church Defence, otherwise—. Come in and see your room.”
He was glad to quit the little lawn. He had learnt too much there. It was dreadful: they did not love each other. More dreadful even than the case of his father and mother, for they, until they married, had got on pretty well. But this man was already rude and brutal and cold: he was still the school bully who twisted up the arms of little boys, and ran pins into them at chapel, and struck them in the stomach when they were swinging on the horizontal bar. Poor Agnes; why ever had she done it? Ought not somebody to interfere?
He had forgotten his sandwiches, and went back to get them.
Gerald and Agnes were locked in each other’s arms.