“When they get the chance. It really isn’t so easy to go as it seems. We have come to the conclusion, Brendon and I, that Mrs. White is psychologically gifted. She throws a sort of spell over us all. We struggle against it at first, but in the end we have to submit. She calls us her guests, but in reality we are her prisoners. We simply can’t get away. There’s that old gentleman at the end of the table—Bullding his name is. He will tell you confidentially that he simply hates the place. Yet he’s been here for six years, and he’s as much a fixture as that sham mahogany sideboard. Everyone will grumble to you confidentially—Miss Ellicot, she’s our swagger young lady, you know—up there, next to Miss White, she will tell you that it is so out of the world here, so far away from everyone one knows. Old Kesterton, choleric-looking individual nearly opposite, will curse the cooking till he’s black in the face, but he never misses a dinner. The Semitic looking young man opposite, who seems to have been committing you to memory piecemeal, will tell you that he was never so bored in all his life as he has been here. Yet he stays. They all stay!”
“And you yourself?”
Brendon laughed.
“Oh, we are also under the spell,” he declared, “but I think that we are here mainly because it is cheap. It is really cheap, you know. To appreciate it you should try rooms.”
“Is this a fair sample of the dinner?” Anna asked, who had the healthy appetite of a strong young woman.
“It is, if anything, a little above the average,” Brendon admitted.
Anna said nothing. The young man opposite was straining his ears to listen to their conversation. Mrs. White caught her eye, and smiled benignly down the table.
“I hope that Mr. Courtlaw is looking after you, Miss Pellissier,” she said.
“Admirably, thank you,” Anna answered.
The young lady with frizzled hair, whom Brendon had pointed out to her as Miss Ellicot, leaned forward from her hostess’s side. She had very frizzy hair indeed, very black eyebrows, a profusion of metallic adornments about her neck and waist, and an engaging smile.