"BOO-O-O-OOM-M-MMMMM!"
It is the luncheon gong.
Just a glance as they sit at table. Don't you think it's a pleasant room? Three tall windows looking out on the sea, noiseless carpet, ornaments on the sideboards rather like wooden broccoli, but the decorations straight from London. But those two large chandelier gas-brackets don't work yet; the plant isn't installed; that's why the red-shaded oil-lamps are placed at intervals down the T of tables. The older folk gather round the head of the T, and down the stalk stretch the children. These will rise before their parents, just as they go out of Church after the Second Lesson; they will break off just below John Willie Garden and the Misses Euonyma and Wygelia there—who, by the way, are more usually called June and Wy. The flowers are chosen to "last well," for Llanyglo is almost as short of flowers as it is of trees; but the linen and plate and other appointments are all good—these actors in Llanyglo's little fore-piece are not accustomed to roughing it, even on a holiday.
As I told you they would, half the women have changed their frocks. Mrs. Lacey is a pink hollyhock now, of which her daughters seem cuttings, and her hat is a sort of pink straw képi, trimmed with flowers that resemble virginia stock. She sits at the end of one arm of the T, with her back to the window. Near her is Mrs. Briggs, in stamped electric-blue velvet—her forearms, on which bracelets shiver, are as uniform in contour from whatever point you look at them as if they had been turned in a lathe. The Misses June and Wy also wear bracelets, from which depend bundles of sixpences, a sixpence for each of their birthdays, sixteen for Wiggie, fourteen for June. John Willie is lunching with Percy Briggs to-day, who lunched with him yesterday. Next to his chair is an empty one. It is Mrs. Maynard's, who has not come down yet. Then comes Val Clayton. Over all, with his napkin tucked into his collar as if he had prepared, not for a lunch, but for a shave, Mr. Morrell presides.
For some reason or other, lunch always begins a little stiffly; but they unbend as they go on. At present Raymond Briggs cannot get away from the subject of the newspapers and their unaccountable lateness.
"Can't understand it," he says for the fifth or sixth time.
"And they were late last Wednesday—no, Thursday—no, I was right, it was Wednesday."
"Was it Wednesday?"
"Yes, the day it looked like rain; you remember?"