He had been brought a small red tomato and a hard, rocky wedge of bacon with little white eyes in it, and an iron determination to hold out at all costs, whatever the consumer's appetite and determination. He smelt, when he came into the common room, sausages, and he saw, with a glance of the eye, that there were sausages no longer.
“I really think, Clinton,” he said, “that a little less appetite on your part in the early morning would be better for everyone concerned.”
Clinton was always perfectly good-tempered, and all he said now was, “All right, old chap—I always have an awful appetite in the morning. I always had.”
Perrin drew himself to his full height and prepared to be dignified.
Clinton said, “I say, old man, you 've got chalk all over your sleeve.”
And Perrin, finding that it was indeed true, could say nothing and feebly tried to brush it off with his hand.
Traill had not spoken since Perrin had come in. He disliked intensely the atmosphere of restraint in the room. He had never before been on such bad terms with anyone, and now at every turn there were discomforts, difficulties, stiffnesses. At this moment he loathed the term and the place and the people as he had never loathed any of them before; he felt that he could not possibly last until the holidays.
Perrin was going to the Upper School for first hour. He was going to teach Divinity, the lesson that he loathed most of all. He gathered his. books up and his gown, and went out into the hall to find his umbrella. The rain was falling more heavily than before, and lashed the panes as though it had some personal grievance against them.
Robert, the general factotum—a long, pale man with a spotty face and a wonderful capacity for dropping china—came in to collect the breakfast things. He passed, clattering about the table. Traill was still deep in the Morning Post.
Perrin came in with a clouded brow. “I can't find,” he said, “my umbrella.”