She fell asleep towards morning, and woke with a start as her alarm clock thundered. But her face was set like marble, and there was not a trace of weakness upon it when she appeared at the family scramble, which did duty for breakfast.
There had been a row between Fred and Gladys, the sister a year older than herself, who was a saleswoman at a fashionable dressmaker's establishment. Matilda, the eldest of the family, was trying to smooth matters while she sewed up a rent in the skirt which Ethel, the youngest, would presently wear to the school "for young ladies" which she daily attended. This, the most youthful Miss Bush, meanwhile sat in a very soiled Japanese quilted dressing gown, devouring sausages. There were bloaters on the table, too, and treacle—and the little general servant was just bringing in the unsavory coffee in the tin coffeepot.
Tea had been good enough for them always in the father's time, and Matilda for her part could not see why Fred had insisted upon having coffee, on the strength of a trip to Boulogne on bank holiday.
But there it was! When Fred insisted, things had to be done—even if one hated coffee!
Katherine Bush loathed most of her family. She had not an expansive nature, and was quite ruthless. Why should she love them just because they were her brothers and sisters? She had not asked to be born among them! They were completely uncongenial to her, and always had been. It was obviously ridiculous and illogical then to expect her to feel affection for them, just because of this accident of birth, so she argued. Matilda, the eldest, who had always been a mother to the rest, did hold one small corner of her heart.
"Poor old Tild," as she called her, "the greatest old fool living," and Matilda adored her difficult sister.
How doubly impossible they all appeared now to the unveiled eyes of Katherine!
"This is simply disgusting stuff, this coffee!" she said, putting her cup down with a grimace. "It is no more like French coffee than Ett looks like a Japanese because she has got on that dirty dressing-gown."
"What do you know of French coffee, I'd like to ask—What ho!" Bert, the brother just younger than herself, demanded, with one of his bright flashes. "Have you been to 'Boulong for a bit of a song,' like the Gov'nor?"
"I wish you'd give over calling me the Gov'nor, Bert!" Mr. Frederick Bush interposed, stopping for a moment his bicker with Gladys. "Mabel strongly objects to it. She says it is elderly and she dislikes slang, anyway."