"What have you got?" said Mr. Britling with an inquiring movement towards the automobile.
She had got quite a lot. She had two sides of bacon, a case of sugar, bags of rice, eggs, a lot of flour.
"What are all these little packets?" said Mr. Britling.
Mrs. Faber looked slightly abashed.
"Cerebos salt," she said. "One gets carried away a little. I just got hold of it and carried it out to the car. I thought we might have to salt things later."
"And the jars are pickles?" said Mr. Britling.
"Yes. But look at all my flour! That's what will go first...."
The lady was a little flurried by Mr. Britling's too detailed examination of her haul. "What good is blacking?" he asked. She would not hear him. She felt he was trying to spoil her morning. She declared she must get on back to her home. "Don't say I didn't warn you," she said. "I've got no end of things to do. There's peas! I want to show cook how to bottle our peas. For this year—it's lucky, we've got no end of peas. I came by here just for the sake of telling you." And with that she presently departed—obviously ruffled by Mrs. Britling's lethargy and Mr. Britling's scepticism.
Mr. Britling watched her go off with a slowly rising indignation.
"And that," he said, "is how England is going to war! Scrambling for food—at the very beginning."