Cibum turbæ duodénæ
Se dat suis manibus.
For a few seconds there was silence; and Teresa saw several ladies exchanging amused, embarrassed glances.
Then Harry could be heard saying, “Er ... er ... er ... a piece ... er ... amazingly well adapted to its audience ... er ... er....” All turned round in the direction of his voice, and some smiled. Then again there was a little silence, till a gallant lady, evidently finding the situation unbearable, came up to Teresa and said, “Thrilling, my dear, thrilling! But I’m afraid in places it’s rather too deep for me.”
Then others followed her example. “What is an auto-sacramentál, exactly?” “Oh, really! A knight of the time of Pedro the Cruel? I always connected Don Juan ... or how is it one ought to pronounce it? Don Huan, is it? I always connected him with the time of Byron, but I suppose that was absurd.” “I liked the troubadour’s jolly red boots; are they what are called Cossack boots? Oh, no, of course, that’s Russian.”
But it was clear they were all horribly embarrassed.
The babies and children had, for some time, been getting fretful; and now the babies were giving their nerve-rending catcalls, the children their heart-rending keening.
In one of her moments of insight, Jollypot had said that there is nothing that brings home to one so forcibly the suffering involved in merely being alive as the change that takes place in the cry of a child between its first and its fourth year.
But the children were soon being comforted with buns; the babies with great, veined, brown-nippled breasts, while Mrs. Moore, markedly avoiding any member of the Lane family, moved about among her women with pursed mouth.