giggle. They were not to know this, but he was referring to his digestion.
"I think it a shame," Mrs Blain brought out, in a warning voice. But the younger ones could not stop, behind hands they had over their mouths.
"I don't know what's so comical, I'm sure," Mrs Blain said in reproof, and then the old man realised from their flushed faces that they were laughing at him.
"I shouldn't pay attention," Mr Rock commented.
"Oh we don't," they answered, still giggling.
"To me," he said. They stopped. "I'm only on sufferance here, you know," he said, with a satisfied bitterness.
"Oh Mr Rock," they cried.
"I think it a shame," Mrs Blain announced, brightly. "Now then," she called out. "Let’s get goin'." And in a moment the old and famous man was left alone at table, altogether blinded by increasing brightness, before an empty plate and a cup that was warm, behind a rumbling stomach, left to dread the journey back with full buckets.
When Sebastian Birt came into the staff breakfast parlour he found he was first. He did not look out on the bright daylight but under the dish cover on a hot plate. He took no scrambled egg.
He poured himself a cup of tea. He was sitting down to this when Miss Winstanley entered. He did not rise. He said to her, in what he imagined to be the manner of a State executive, for he was always in a part, "Well, well," he said, rubbed hands together.
"Morning, Sebastian," she said. "It'll be a lovely day."
"So it is, so it is."
"But I thought you'd got off for the night," she went on, and helped herself at the side table, paying attention to how he acted.
"Couldn't fit it in, unexpectedly detained, these trade delegations from the North," he answered, to keep up the pretence. But he did not look away from his cup. As he was fat, and very short, he seemed a small boy. It was not at this that Miss Winstanley tenderly laughed.
"And is the guv'nor to let you come to the dance tonight?"
"There are, or rather were, two governors," he replied, this time, all at once, in the part of the sort of lecturer he was not. "The Governor of the Bank of England, abolished as such long since, then the governor of the local poor law institution, or poor house, known to each one of you, if not from personal experience, then at least by report, and a factor in our civilization that we have yet to eradicate." He raised his voice in mockery while he watched his cup. "To pull out by the roots," he ended.
"Edge?" Miss Winstanley prompted.
"The functions are so similar," he replied. "They may readily be confused. The best mind can fail to distinguish between Edge and the common or garden workmaster. Where similar functions are operated in dissimilar environments which may yet have factors common to both . . ." and here he paused, at a loss perhaps. This gave her time to put over, "I know all that, but are you coming?"
"I should really see my secretary, let me just glance at my book," he replied, in the character of an executive once more. "I cannot be rushed willy nilly into appointments." A silence fell. Then she thought of something.
"Look here," she said, "you put yourself down as not to want breakfast."
"Tchk, tchk," he answered, still the State manager. "What has my girl been about?" For the first time he looked slyly at Miss Winstanley. But she reached for the butter, and did not notice. When he went on, as he did at once, it was with lowered eyes once more.
"They will allow themselves to be pressed. Not in a trouser press, ha, ha, I should hope not indeed. But they will lose their pretty heads over the telephone. When calls really begin coming in, they won't simply lay the receivers down off the hooks to have time to think, they will persist with answers till they get more and more flurried. Then the harm's done, the mistake is made, and I'm landed for an engagement I can't possibly . . ."
"But there isn't a breakfast for you, Sebastian," she interrupted.
"I shall decline to take one of theirs, even if