Armorel sat behind the cups with as much ease as if she had been accustomed from infancy to entertain young gentlemen at breakfast. She was serious over her task, and poured out the coffee as if it was something precious, not to be wasted or carelessly administered, which is the spirit in which all good food should be approached. She did not ask any questions, nor did she talk much during the banquet. Perhaps she had an instinctive perception of the great truth that breakfast, which is taken at the beginning of the day--the sacred day, with all its possibilities and its chances of what may happen; the fateful day, which alone and unaided may change the whole course and current of a life--should be approached with a becoming gravity. At breakfast the man fortifies himself before he goes forth to work. But he has the work before him. In the evening it is done: he has passed through the dangers of the day: he still lives: he has received no hurt: he has, we hope, prospered in his honest handiwork: he may laugh and rejoice. But at breakfast we should be serious. 'What will you do,' asked Armorel, breakfast completed, 'until Peter is ready? He has got some work, you know, before he can come out.' 'I should like first,' he said, 'to see your flower-farm, if I may.' 'If you please. But there is nothing to see at this time of the year. You must not think we grow flowers all the year round. If you were here in February, you would see the fields covered with beautiful flowers--iris, anemone, jonquil, narcissus, and daffodil. They are very pretty then, and the air is sweet with their scent. But now the fields are quite bare.' 'I should like to see them, however.' 'I will show them to you. It is a great happiness to the islands,' said Armorel, gravely, 'that we have found out the flower-farming. Everybody was very poor before. All the old ways of living were gone, you see. A long time ago the people had wrecks every winter--the sea cast up quantities of things which they could sell, or they went out in boats and took the things out of the hold when the ship was on the rocks. And then they were all smugglers: the Scillonians used to run over to France openly, day and night, with no one to stop them. And they used to carry fruit and vegetables out to the homeward-bound ships in the Channel. And then they were pilots as well. Some of the men used to make as much as two hundred pounds a year as pilots. My grandfathers were all pilots. They were smugglers too; and they had this farm and grew vegetables for the ships. Then the Government built the lighthouses, and there were no more wrecks; and the Preventive Service came and stopped the smuggling; and since the steamers took the place of the sailing-ships no vessels put in here, and there are no more pilots wanted. So, you see, it was as if nothing was left at all.' 'It does seem rough on the people.'