Caroline had gone into the kitchen to get the supper ready. He called her back. ‘I’ll come,’ he said, ‘they’ll have to see it sometime. Tell them—for to-night at any rate—not to make remarks.’
So Mrs. Trimblerigg went off to impose discipline on the family. To the maid she said, ‘you can go out now.’ To the children when the maid had gone: ‘your father has got something the matter with his head. You are not to make remarks.’
Presently she went and told him that supper was ready. A lamp was upon the table; but it wore a shade; Mr. Trimblerigg did not, it would have been no use. He entered the room aware, in that half-light, that he had become conspicuous; nor could he be unconscious of the three pairs of eyes turning upon him an expectant gaze which became riveted.
Benjie, the youngest, gave an instinctive squeak of excitement; then, hushed by his mother but forgetting to close his mouth, he dribbled.
Mr. Trimblerigg, according to custom, stood to ask a blessing. ‘For these, and all Thy other mercies,’ he said, and stopped short: ‘a mercy’ was what he could not feel it to be. Conversation was slow to begin. All the children reached out with healthy appetites for the bread and butter. Amy, conscientious child, still all eyes, seeking an unforbidden topic of conversation, surmounted the impediment by saying, ‘Ma, why didn’t we have pancakes to-day?’
‘Hush, my dear!’ said Caroline, who had a feeling that the remark was too apposite; and indeed the barbed point had already gone home. So that—thought Mr. Trimblerigg—was how it appeared to a child’s eyes!
He helped them all quickly from the dish before him; after that they looked at him less continuously, but not less admiringly. This eased the situation till Martin, the elder of the two boys, inquired concerning the food upon his plate. ‘Mummy, why don’t poached eggs have their yellow outside? Why don’t they, Mummy?’
Caroline told him not to talk, but to go on eating.
Amy remedied matters in her own way, saying wisely, ‘They do come outside when they’re hatched; they turn into chickens then, don’t they, Mummy?’
Martin said, ‘No, they don’t!’ and looked corroboratively at his father. Benjie said: ‘Yes, they do: eggs do.’