Edmund was tired of bad meals. The novelty, what he at first called the "Swissishness," was wearing off, and as he took his place at table that afternoon there flashed into his mind a vivid picture of the tea-table at Remote. Aunt Esperance sitting kind and smiling behind the brilliant silver teapot that reflected such funny-looking little boys; the white, white napery—Aunt Esperance was so particular about tablecloths—laden with scones, such good scones, both plain and currant! Shortbread in a silver cake-basket; and jam, crystal dishes full of jam, two kinds, topaz-coloured and ruby. Somehow the sight of that horrid tin of bloater-paste evoked a poignantly beatific vision of the jam. It was the jam broke Edmund down. He gave a dry sob, laid his arms on the table and his head on his arms, wailing: "Oh, dear! oh, dear! I wish Aunt Esperance hadn’t gone and died." Mr. Wycherly started up, looking painfully distressed. Montagu ran round to his little brother and put his arm round his shoulder—at the same time he murmured to his guardian: "It’s the butter, it really is very bad." "It’s all bad," lamented Edmund; "we shall starve, all of us, if it goes on. One morning that bed-making body will come in and she’ll find three skeletons. I know she will." Mr. Wycherly sat down again. "Edmund, my dear little boy," he said brokenly, "I am so sorry, I ought not to have brought you here yet...." "Look, look at poor Guardie," whispered Montagu. Edmund raised his head. "Would you like me to telegraph to Lady Alicia and ask her to have you for the rest of the holidays? I know she would, and by-and-bye, surely, by-and-bye we shall find some one less incompetent than that—than Mrs. Griffin." Edmund shook himself free of his brother’s arm and literally flung himself upon his guardian, exclaiming vehemently: "No, no, I want to stay with you. It’s just as bad for you." It was worse, for Mr. Wycherly could not restore exhausted nature with liberal supplies of Banbury cakes and buns. For the last three days he had eaten hardly anything and was, moreover, seriously concerned that the boys were assuredly not getting proper food. He would have gone back with them to the King’s Arms immediately he discovered how extremely limited were Mrs. Griffin’s powers had it not been that just then he received the furniture removers’ bill, and, as Lady Alicia had warned him, it was very heavy. He had come in to tea with a sore heart that afternoon, for Mrs. Griffin had half an hour before informed him that she could not come on the morrow; so that now even her poor help would be lost to them. She was going, she said, to her "sister-in-law" at Abingdon for Sunday, as she needed a rest. "So much cookin’ and cleanin’ is what I ain’t used to; no, not if it was ever so; and I can’t keep on with it for long at a stretch. I’ll come on Monday just to oblige you if so be as I’m up to it."