"At Ilford," answered my mother.

"We must make a joke of it," said my father.

My mother, sitting down, began to cry. It had been a trying week for
my mother. A party to dinner--to a real dinner, beginning with
anchovies and ending with ices from the confectioner's; if only they
would remain ices and not, giving way to unaccustomed influences,
present themselves as cold custard--was an extraordinary departure
from the even tenor of our narrow domestic way; indeed, I recollect
none previous. First there had been the house to clean and rearrange
almost from top to bottom; endless small purchases to be made of
articles that Need never misses, but which Ostentation, if ever you
let her sneering nose inside the door, at once demands. Then the
kitchen range--it goes without saying: one might imagine them all
members of a stove union, controlled by some agitating old boiler out
of work--had taken the opportunity to strike, refusing to bake another
dish except under permanently improved conditions, necessitating weary
days with plumbers. Fat cookery books, long neglected on their shelf,
had been consulted, argued with and abused; experiments made, failures
sighed over, successes noted; cost calculated anxiously; means and
ways adjusted, hope finally achieved, shadowed by fear.

And now with victory practically won, to have the reward thus dashed
from her hand at the last moment! Downstairs in the kitchen would be
the dinner, waiting for the guests; upstairs round the glittering
table would be the assembled guests, waiting for their dinner. But
between the two yawned an impassable gulf. The bridge, without a word
of warning, had bolted--was probably by this time well on its way to