Mrs Saxon looked from one to another of her children with the same strained, unnatural smile which had greeted them a few minutes before, and Gurth and Dreda, falling behind the rest, rolled expressive eyes and whispered low forebodings.
“Something up! I thought as much. What can it be?”
“Don’t know. Something horrid, evidently. In the holidays, too. What a sell!”
Miss Bruce had considerately disappeared, and the parents and children were left alone in the big bare library, with its rows of fusty, out-of-date books in early Victorian mahogany bookcases, its three long windows draped in crimson red curtains, its Indian carpet worn by the tramp of many feet. A cheerful fire blazed in the grate, however, and the tea equipage set out on the long table was sufficiently tempting to raise the spirits of the travellers. It was a real old-fashioned sit-down tea, where one was not expected to balance a cup and plate on one’s knee and yet refrain from spilling tea or scattering crumbs on the carpet. Girls and boys arranged themselves in their usual places with sighs of relief and satisfaction, and, disdaining bread-and-butter, helped themselves energetically to the richest cake on the table. It was a family custom with the Saxons to begin on cake and work steadily back to bread and butter. There had been some opposition to encounter from conservative elders before this reversal of the ordinary programme had been sanctioned, but the arguments advanced had been too strong to resist.
“I can ’preciate things more when I’m hungry. Cake’s the best thing; why need I stodge on bread and butter till I can’t properly ’preciate the cake? Why can’t I stodge on cake, and eat the bread when I don’t ’preciate? It doesn’t matter about bread!”
So ran the thread of Harold’s arguments, and it must be confessed that there was reason therein. To-day, as the young people satisfied their first pangs of hunger on iced cake, the parents watching them exchanged a piteous glance, for the proceeding seemed so sadly typical of the secret that was about to be divulged! Until this day, all that was richest and best in life had been the everyday possession of these loved and fortunate children—after to-day, the love would continue unchanged, but the luxuries must come to an end.
The meal was unusually silent, both Mr and Mrs Saxon and the elder boys and girls being too much oppressed by their own feelings to be able to indulge in ordinary light conversation; only Harold and Maud remained unconscious of the cloud in the atmosphere, and everyone was thankful for their artless prattle, which filled up what would otherwise have been a painful silence. As for the twins, they were quite elated to find so attentive an audience, for as a rule their attempts to enter the conversation were severely nipped in the bud. “That’s enough, thank you!” Rowena would say in her most lofty manner. “Shut up, you kids. A fellow can’t hear himself speak for your row!” Gurth would call out fiercely. Even when Mrs Saxon was present she would shake her head gently across the table, to enforce the oft-repeated axiom that in so large a family the younger members must perforce learn to be quiet at table. Maud beamed with pleasure at being allowed to continue her never-ending descriptions without a word of remonstrance. She was a fair, pretty, somewhat stupid child, gifted with an overflow of words, which were, however, singularly incapable of conveying any definite impression. Observation she possessed in abundance, but her discursive narratives were by no means improved by being weighted by a plethora of useless detail. One could listen to Maud’s efforts to describe her own doings for half an hour on end, and remain almost as much in the dark as at the beginning! On the present occasion she was full of excitement about a wonderful conjurer whose tricks she had witnessed at a children’s party in town three nights before, and which she was anxious to enumerate for the benefit of the family.
”...He was the most egg-strawdinary creature you ever saw. He did the most egg-strawdinary things. I’ll tell you what he did... You know the Westons’ drawing-room? You go upstairs—crimson carpets, and such wide brass rods. Then there’s a statue holding up a lamp, and the first door’s the drawing-room. All the doors were taken down to make more room, and there were rows and rows of forms... He was like a Frenchman with a pointed moustache, but his clothes weren’t very clean... He rolled up his sleeves, and there was a ring on his finger, and yards and yards of ribbon came out of his thumb. He had a little table in front of him with bulgy legs. It stands in the corner with silver on it. Then he asked a boy in the front row for a watch... Mr Weston said he wouldn’t have lent his, but he got it back all right. It was egg-strawdinary! Meta Rawlins sat by me. She had a pink sash. She says her father can do it a little bit, only of course not as well as this one. Then there was an egg. If he had broken it, it would have made a mess on the carpet! Meta said perhaps it was stone. He talked all the time, so funny and quick, and one of his front teeth was out. He asked if any boy or girl would go up to help him, and Brian Hackett went. He looked so silly. He had to hold things in his hand, and when he asked for them, they weren’t there. It was egg-strawdinary! We had supper in the dining-room, jellies and cream, and presents in the trifle. I saw the conjurer having his in the library. I never saw anything so egg-strawdinary in all my life!”
Gurth and Hereward exchanged expressive glances, Rowena frowned impatience, Mrs Saxon smiled a faint amusement, and Maud continued to prattle on, blissfully unconscious of the fact that no one troubled to listen.
It was after everyone had been fed and refreshed that the explanation of the mysterious summons from town was given, in response to an outspoken question from Dreda, whose impetuous nature was ever impatient of suspense.