the face of Mr. Emilio Zanti, London streets, and Zachary's silver
candlesticks were mingled confusedly in his brain.


III

And indeed throughout the dreary supper Peter's brain was in a whirl. It
often happened that supper passed without a word of conversation from first
to last. His father very rarely said anything, Peter never said anything at
all, and if Aunt Jessie did venture on a little conversation she received
so slender an encouragement that she always forsook the attempt after a
very short time. It was a miserable meal.

It was cold beef and beetroot and blanc-mange with a very, very little
strawberry jam round the edges of the glass dish, and there was a hard red
cheese and little stiff woolly biscuits.

But old grandfather Westcott was always hungry, and his querulous
complaints were as regular an accompaniment to the evening meal as the
ticking of the marble clock. But his beef had to be cut up for him into
very tiny pieces and that gave Aunt Jessie a great deal of work, so that
his appeals for a second helping were considered abominable selfishness.

"Oh, my dear, just a leetle piece of beef" (this from the very heart of
the cushions). "Just the leetlest piece of beef for a poor old man--such a
leetle piece he had, and he's had such a hunger." No answer to this and at
last a strange noise from the cushions like the sound of dogs quarrelling.
At last again, "Oh, just the leetlest piece of beef for a poor old man--"
and then whimpering and "poor old man" repeated at intervals that
lengthened gradually into sleep.