“I’m sorry to interrupt your meditations,” she said politely, “and I won’t detain you a moment. I’ve merely come to ask if you would mind lending me your rubbers—not your best ones you have on, but the second best with the seven holes in the soles and one heel gone—in order that I may go to the neighbours and borrow a slice of bread. ‘We ain’t like them as asks,’” she went on, quoting a favourite expression of a well-known whiner in the village, whose practice is to take without asking, “‘but it do seem hard when you see yer own flesh and blood a-crying for vittels.’ Not that I would presume to interfere with your household arrangements and upset your meals, but what with Ursula in a dead faint making her will, and Eileen packing up to return to her grandmother in order to get something to eat——” “What’s the time?” I cut her short. “It was two when last I saw the clock, but I’ve wandered miles since then in search of you, hence the fact that my own rubbers are worn out.” Then I remembered that I had never mentioned the matter of meals to Eileen that morning; though, in any case, there wasn’t much that could be cooked till that sheep was killed, come Friday: we had naught but the remains of a shoulder of mutton. “How did you find where I was?” I enquired, as we ploughed our way back. “Footprints, oh, blessed word!” she said. “In any case, you shed your garments wherever you went, and thoughtfully left your coat hanging in the larch avenue; Eileen saw it in the distance and came shrieking to us that the burglar had evidently hung himself from a tree by the top gate!” As there proved to be nothing at all on the mutton bone, we decided to reckon it a meatless day, and we sat down to a lunch of bread and cheese and coffee—each reading a cookery book the while. The Food Authorities surely couldn’t object to _that_!—and you’ve no idea what a fillip it gives to a war-meal, if you’ve never tried it. Collecting cookery books, ancient and modern, being one of my hobbies, there was a fine assortment to choose from. I selected “Ten Minutes with my Chafing Dish,” and what that author did in the time you would never credit! My bread and cheese became, in turn, braised terrapin, crayfish omelette, creamed oysters with Spanish onions, escalloped chicken with mushrooms, and fricaseed trout with paprika sauce. I had it all at the one meal, no questions asked about the number of courses and the ounces of flour, and it only cost me about sixpence including the coffee. Ursula, who had annexed a 1724 volume, ate her frugalities to the accompaniment of Double Rum Shrub; but, as I told her, I was thankful I had been better brought up.