Kennedy sat down, and began to toy diffidently with a sausage,
remembering, as he did so, certain diatribes of Fenn's against the
food at Kay's. As he became more intimate with the sausage, he
admitted to himself that Fenn had had reason. Mr Kay meanwhile pounded
away in moody silence at a plate of kidneys and bacon. It was one of
the many grievances which gave the Kayite material for conversation
that Mr Kay had not the courage of his opinions in the matter of food.
He insisted that he fed his house luxuriously, but he refused to brave
the mysteries of its bill of fare himself.

Fenn had not come down when Kennedy went in to breakfast. He arrived
some ten minutes later, when Kennedy had vanquished the sausage, and
was keeping body and soul together with bread and marmalade.

"I cannot have this, Fenn," snapped Mr Kay; "you must come down in
time."

Fenn took the rebuke in silence, cast one glance at the sausage which
confronted him, and then pushed it away with such unhesitating
rapidity that Mr Kay glared at him as if about to take up the cudgels
for the rejected viand. Perhaps he remembered that it scarcely
befitted the dignity of a house-master to enter upon a wrangle with a
member of his house on the subject of the merits and demerits of
sausages, for he refrained, and Fenn was allowed to go on with his
meal in peace.

Kennedy's chief anxiety had been with regard to Fenn. True, the latter
could hardly blame him for being made head of Kay's, since he had not
been consulted in the matter, and, if he had been, would have refused