Part 1 (2/2)

”Tantrim,” said Mrs. Deacon, softly.

”Oh, ho,” said he, and said no more.

The temper of Mrs. Bett, who also lived with them, had days of high vibration when she absented herself from the table as a kind of self-indulgence, and no one could persuade her to food. ”Tantrims,” they called these occasions.

”Baked potatoes,” said Mr. Deacon. ”That's good--that's good. The baked potato contains more nourishment than potatoes prepared in any other way. The nourishment is next to the skin. Roasting retains it.”

”That's what I always think,” said his wife pleasantly.

For fifteen years they had agreed about this.

They ate, in the indecent silence of first savouring food. A delicate crunching of crust, an odour of baked-potato sh.e.l.ls, the slip and touch of the silver.

”Num, num, nummy-num!” sang the child Monona loudly, and was hushed by both parents in simultaneous exclamation which rivalled this lyric outburst. They were alone at table. Di, daughter of a wife early lost to Mr. Deacon, was not there. Di was hardly ever there. She was at that age. That age, in Warbleton.

A clock struck the half hour.

”It's curious,” Mr. Deacon observed, ”how that clock loses. It must be fully quarter to.” He consulted his watch. ”It is quarter to!” he exclaimed with satisfaction. ”I'm pretty good at guessing time.”

”I've noticed that!” cried his Ina.

”Last night, it was only twenty-three to, when the half hour struck,” he reminded her.

”Twenty-one, I thought.” She was tentative, regarded him with arched eyebrows, mastication suspended.

This point was never to be settled. The colloquy was interrupted by the child Monona, whining for her toast. And the doorbell rang.

”Dear me!” said Mr. Deacon. ”What can anybody be thinking of to call just at meal-time?”

He trod the hall, flung open the street door. Mrs. Deacon listened.

Lulu, coming in with the toast, was warned to silence by an uplifted finger. She deposited the toast, tiptoed to her chair. A withered baked potato and cold creamed salmon were on her plate. The child Monona ate with shocking appreciation. Nothing could be made of the voices in the hall. But Mrs. Bett's door was heard softly to unlatch. She, too, was listening.

A ripple of excitement was caused in the dining-room when Mr. Deacon was divined to usher some one to the parlour. Mr. Deacon would speak with this visitor in a few moments, and now returned to his table. It was notable how slight a thing would give him a sense of self-importance.

Now he felt himself a man of affairs, could not even have a quiet supper with his family without the outside world demanding him. He waved his hand to indicate it was nothing which they would know anything about, resumed his seat, served himself to a second spoon of salmon and remarked, ”More roast duck, anybody?” in a loud voice and with a slow wink at his wife. That lady at first looked blank, as she always did in the presence of any humour couched with the least indirection, and then drew back her chin and caught her lower lip in her gold-filled teeth.

This was her conjugal rebuking.

Swedenborg always uses ”conjugial.” And really this sounds more married.

It should be used with reference to the Deacons. No one was ever more married than they--at least than Mr. Deacon. He made little conjugal jokes in the presence of Lulu who, now completely unnerved by the habit, suspected them where they did not exist, feared lurking _entendre_ in the most innocent comments, and became more tense every hour of her life.

And now the eye of the master of the house fell for the first time upon the yellow tulip in the centre of his table.

”Well, _well_!” he said. ”What's this?”

Ina Deacon produced, fleetly, an unlooked-for dimple.

”Have you been buying flowers?” the master inquired.

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