"I'm going to
work hard."
"About time," I said.
CHAPTER VI
We had cold bacon for lunch that day. There was not much of it. I
took it to be the bacon we had not eaten for breakfast. But on a
clean dish with parsley it looked rather neat. It did not suggest,
however, a lunch for four people, two of whom had been out all the
morning in the open air. There was some excuse for Dick.
"I never heard before," said Dick, "of cold fried bacon as a hors
d'oeuvre."
"It is not a hors d'oeuvre," explained Robina. "It is all there is
for lunch." She spoke in the quiet, passionless voice of one who has
done with all human emotion. She added that she should not be
requiring any herself, she having lunched already.
Veronica, conveying by her tone and bearing the impression of
something midway between a perfect lady and a Christian martyr,
observed that she also had lunched.
"Wish I had," growled Dick.
I gave him a warning kick. I could see he was on the way to getting
himself into trouble. As I explained to him afterwards, a woman is
most dangerous when at her meekest. A man, when he feels his temper
rising, takes every opportunity of letting it escape. Trouble at
such times he welcomes. A broken boot-lace, or a shirt without a
button, is to him then as water in the desert. An only collar-stud
that will disappear as if by magic from between his thumb and finger
and vanish apparently into thin air is a piece of good fortune sent
on these occasions only to those whom the gods love.
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