"Oh, but you're not being particularly nice to me. Look how hard you've been making me work! I'm sure I've sides-to-middled enough sheets to stock the East Riding."
"Well then, stop working, and have a cigarette—oh, I forgot, you don't smoke. Well, then, sit down and be at peace—and have some toffee."
They had made the toffee last night, after Mary discovered that David had abjured smoking on principle, and adored sweet things. She had declared it to be an essential item of the treatment for colds, and had shown him how to mix sugar and treacle and vinegar over the dining-room fire.
David passed her the tin, placed a large lump of toffee in the side of his mouth, and lay back luxuriously in John's arm-chair. Presently he began to chant:
"Nowhere does the antagonistic character of capitalist production assert itself more brutally than in the progress of English agriculture and the retrogression of the English agricultural labourer...."
There were voices in the hall, and a knock at the door. Violet entered the room. Mary saw, to her horror, a smudge down one side of Violet's nose, and her cap awry above her left ear. She announced spasmodically:
"Mr. and Mrs. Bannister, m'm!"
Sarah, in her bugled bonnet and calling cloak, sailed into the room.
"My God!" murmured David, under his breath.
Mary rose. She would have been more capable of dealing with the situation had her mouth not been full of toffee, but her composure was heroic.