THE DERSINGHAMS AT HOME 141

happily, for her own life, after months of the dull routine
of time-killing, had suddenly become crimson, rich and
glorious. ''Now, have you got the plates ready? You
must have this served at once, mustn't you? Where's
that silly girl? Gone to bed? All right, then, make the
cook serve the rest of the dinner. She must have every-
thing ready by this time. Call her, my dear. Tell her
to bring up the plates." And they returned at last to
the dining-room, two sisters out of burning Troy.

Alas, all was not well in there. Something had hap-
pened during the interval of waiting. It was not the
women, who were all sympathetic smiles and solicitude:
Mrs. Trape even dropped the ventriloquial effect, actu-
ally disturbed the lower part of her face, in order to
explain that she knew, no one better, what it was these
days, when anything might be expected of that class;
and Miss Verever, though retaining automatically some
peculiarities of tone and grimace, contrived to say some-
thing reassuring. No, it was not the women, it was the
men. Mr. Golspie looked like a man who had already
said some brutal things and was fully prepared to say
some more; Major Trape looked very stiff and uncom-
promising, as if he had just sentenced a couple of
surveyors to be shot; Mr. Pearson gave the impression
that he had been faintly tee-teeing on both sides of a
quarrel and was rather tired of it; and Mr. Dersingham
looked uneasy, anxious, exasperated. There was no mis-
taking the atmosphere, in which distant thunder still
rolled. The stupid men had had to wait for the more
substantial part of dinner; they had felt empty, then
they had felt cross; and so they had argued, shouted,
quarrelled, not all of them perhaps, but certainly Mr.
Golspie and Major Trape. Probably at any moment,