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Anna, notwithstanding her quiet clothes, a figure marvellously out of accord with her surroundings, sat before a small marble-topped table at a crowded A.B.C., and munched a roll and butter with hearty appetite. "If only I could afford another!" she thought regretfully. "I wonder why I am always hungry nowadays. It is so ridiculous."
The archdeacon, however, had not come up from his rectory to St Paul's Churchyard to enjoy himself, and therefore nothing was said of the scanty fare. The guests were as sorry as the viands; hardly anything was said over the breakfast-table. The archdeacon munched his toast in ominous silence, turning over bitter thoughts in his deep mind.
Hebblethwaite munched a biscuit and sipped his sherry. Presently the latter laid down the telephone and reported success. "Mr. Spencer Wyatt was on his way to a city dinner, sir," he announced. "They caught him in the hall and he will call here." Mr. Hebblethwaite nodded. "See that he is sent up directly he comes." In less than five minutes Mr. Spencer Wyatt was ushered in.
It was while she munched her cakes and sipped the cool lemonade in the window-seat with an elm's branches so close that she could touch them, and wondered how near to this room her grandfather had been lodged, and what the mistress of the house was like, that Mrs. Owen appeared, after the lightest tap on the high walnut door.
His antipathy had become aversion, and Wallie sometimes caught himself with his fork poised in mid air, stopping to hate John, who munched and smacked beside him, or Will, who gobbled at the end of the table, or Rufus, shovelling opposite him.
This they sweetened with molasses and drank out of tin cups while they munched hardtack. Bill's prophecy as to the wind proved a true one, and in the half hour while they were at their luncheon so good a breeze had sprang up that when they left Rabbit Island both sails were hoisted.
Quietly he withdrew to the other side of the barn, to return later when the saddle and bridle had been removed, and the young man stood stroking the pony, as the little horse munched his generous feed of corn. The elder man laid his hand on the broad shoulder of the lad so like him, and looked full into the clear eyes.
He himself purchased two big pies from the sutler after an angry haggle in which he was easily worsted; and he munched away contentedly as he walked toward the lines of the 3rd Zouaves, his spurs and sabre jingling, Burgess following respectfully at heel. "Hello, Steve!" he called out to a sun-burnt young zouave who was drying his freshly washed turban in the hill breeze.
And then Apollo, he has his work cut out for him: with such a press of oracular business, it is much if he has any ears left to hear with: he is wanted at Delphi; the next minute, he must be off to Colophon; then away to Xanthus; then back at a trot to Clarus; then it is Delos, then Branchidae; in short, he is at the beck of every priestess who has taken her draught of holy water, munched her laurel-leaf, and made the tripod rock; it is now or never; if he is not there that minute to reel off the required oracle, his credit is gone.
He apologized for having no plum-pudding to crown the feast. "But, you see," he said, "we kaint grow no corn hyar, and we'm clean run out ov flour; hev ter make out on taters 's best we kin." I sincerely sympathized with him on the lack of bread-stuff among them, and wondered no longer at the avidity with which they had munched our flinty biscuits on first coming aboard.