The Green Bank gave them cordial welcome, and luncheon was speedily spread in a private sitting-room, at a snug round table by a window overlooking the harbour—luncheon, and of the best, tongue and chicken, and salad, cherry pasty, junket and cream.
Colonel Disney applied himself to the meal with a hearty relish.
“There is just this one advantage in bad cooking at home that it makes one so thoroughly enjoy everything one gets abroad,” he said, laughing at his own prowess.
“I’ll try and get a better cook, if you like, Martin,” Isola said, with rather a helpless air.
To a wife of one and twenty there seems such futility in worrying about a cook.
“You couldn’t possibly get a worse. How long have you put up with this one?”
“Ever since Tabitha left.”
“Good heavens! You have been starving upon ill-cooked food for six months. No wonder you look thin and out of health.”
“I am really very well. There is nothing the matter with me.”
“Yes, yes, there is a great deal the matter. A bad cook, solitude, no one to watch over you and care for you. But that is all over now. You are eating no lunch—not even that superb cherry pasty. I’ll be off to find Tabitha. I shan’t be more than half an hour, unless Crown Terrace is at the extremity of Falmouth. Have you brought a book to read while I am away? No, foolish child. Never mind. There is the county paper, and there is the harbour, with all its life, for you to look at.”