Ten minutes later breakfast smoked on the wide kitchen table, Mrs. Brown, like a presiding goddess, flourishing a big spoon by a frying-pan that sent up a savoury odour.
“I’m sure I hope you’ll all kindly excuse having it in here,” she said in pained tones. “No use to think of those lazy hussies of girls having the breakfast-room ready at this hour. So I thought as how you wouldn’t mind.”
“Mind!—not much, Mrs. Brown,” Jim laughed. “You’re too good to us altogether. Eggs and bacon! Well, you are a brick! Cold tucker would have done splendidly for us.”
“Cold, indeed!—not if I know it—and you precious lambs off for such a ride, and going to be hot weather and all,” said the breathless Mrs. Brown indignantly. “Now, you just eat a good breakfast, Miss Norah, my love. I’ve doughnuts here, nearly done, nice and puffy and brown, just as you like them, so hurry up and don’t let your bacon get cold.”
There was not, indeed, much chance for the bacon, which disappeared in a manner truly alarming, while its fate was speedily shared by the huge pile of crisp doughnuts which Mrs. Brown presently placed upon the table with a flourish.
“We don’t get things like this at school!” Wally said regretfully, pausing for an instant before his seventh.
“All the more reason you should eat plenty now,” said their constructor, holding the doughnuts temptingly beneath his nose. “Come now, dearie, do eat something!” and Wally bashfully recommenced his efforts.
“How’s Billy getting on?” Jim inquired.
“Billy’s in the back kitchen, Master Jim, my love, and you’ve no call to worry your head about him, He’s had three plates of bacon and five eggs, and most like by this time he’s finished all his doughnuts and drunk his coffee-pot dry. That black image will eat anythink,” concluded Mrs. Brown solemnly.
“Well, I can’t eat anything more, anyhow,” Jim declared. “How we’re all going to ride fifteen miles beats me. If we sleep all day, instead of catching fish for you, you’ve only got yourself to blame, Mrs. Brown.” Whereat Mrs. Brown emitted fat and satisfied chuckles, and the meeting broke up noisily, and rushed off to find its hats.