I was just the least bit in the world offended, not seeing why I should not hurry up the truants, especially as I was extremely hungry again; but they came at last, carrying two piled trays of provisions. I had never seen Marjorie look prettier. Her eyes were brighter than ever, and she showed not the slightest trace of unhappiness. Obviously, she had quite forgotten the events of the morning.
I cannot tell you what fun the dinner was. The soup was top-hole—mock turtle, and one of Elizabeth Lazenby's finest efforts. Lockhart was a tremendous success as butler, and the "claret wine"—I should have thrown it at my scout's head at Oxford—tasted like "Château la Rose" at least.
Bernard and Marjorie made the omelette over my fire, while the rest of us sat waiting and Lockhart and I smoked a cigarette. Marjorie ordered my brother about most unmercifully. Suddenly, it was nearing a critical moment and both of them were crouching over the pan, I happened to turn my eyes in their direction. They were not looking at the omelette at all. They were looking at each other and their faces were almost solemn. Then it burst upon me and I fear I was indiscreet. I said aloud: "The very thing! Oh, my holy aunt, the very thing!"
They whipped round.
"What is?" Bernard asked.
"Why, the omelette, you blighter!" I replied, and kicked Doris under the table. She understood at once. Girls are so quick, aren't they?
When we had eaten the omelette and the round of cold beef had "ebbed some," as I once heard a Rhodes' Scholar say at Oxford, my brother rose, glass in hand.
"Mr. Vice," he said, "the King!"
I had dined in the wardroom with Bernard when he was on board the Terrific, and I knew what to do.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the King!" I said, and we drank that loyal toast in silence. Somehow it altered the mood of each individual. A gravity fell upon us, not sadness or boredom, but we stopped to think, as it were. Only two hundred miles away, over the marshes and over the sea, the great German battleships were waiting. Nearer than Penzance is to London, the armies of England at that moment were shivering in the trenches round Ostend. And in Morstone House School—what was there that hung undefined, but heavy and secret, like a miasma upon the air?