Miriam turned towards the unexpectedness of her voice and sat helplessly observing. The serge sleeves were too short to cover her heavy red wrists; her pudgy hands held her knife and fork broadside, like salad servers. Her hair was combed flatly up over her large skull and twisted into a tiny screw at the top just behind the bulge of her fringe. Could she possibly be a boarder? She looked of far less consequence even than the Baileys. Her whole person was unconsciously ill at ease, making one feel ashamed. "Mrs. m-Barrow is another of 'em," said the little man with his eyebrows raised as he sniggered out the words. "I _am_ Mr. Gunna, I doan believe in go-an abate with a face like a fiddle." Mr. Gunner's laughter flung back his head and sat him upright and brought him back to lean over his plate shaking noiselessly with his head sunk sideways between his raised shoulders as if he were dodging a blow. The eyes he turned maliciously towards Mrs. Barrow were a hard opaque pale blue. His lips turned outwards as he ate and his knife and fork had an upward tilt when at rest. Some of his spots were along the margin of his lips, altering their shape and making them look angry and sore. The eating part of his face was sullen and angry, not touched by the laughter that drew his eyebrows up and wrinkled his bent forehead and sounded only as a little click in his throat at each breath. "There's plenty of glum folks abate," scolded Mrs. Barrow. Miriam was aware that she was recoiling visibly, and tried to fix her attention on her meal. Mrs. Bailey was carving large second helpings and Emile's vegetable dishes had been refilled. None of these people thought it extraordinary that there should be all this good meal and a waiter, every day ... it would be shameful to come again for the sake of the meal, feeling hostile. Besides, it would soon be unendurable; they would be aware of criticisms and would resent them. The only way to be able to come would be to pretend to laugh at remarks about people and join in discussions on opinions about cheerfulness and seriousness and winter and summer. They would not know that one was not sincere. They were perfectly sincere in their laughter and talk. They all had some sort of common understanding, even when they disagreed. It was the same everlasting problem again, the way people took everything for granted. They would be pleased, would turn and like one if one could say heartily _isn't_ he a funny little man, mts, my _word_, or well I don't see anything particularly funny about him, or _oh_, give me the _summer_. But if one did that one would presently be worn and strained with lying, left with an empty excitement, while they went serenely on their way, and the reality that was there when one first sat down with them would have gone. Always and always in the end there was nothing but to be alone. And yet it needed people in the world to make the reality when one was alone.