interest in the world, and his
senile belief in Magic, as nothing else could have done.

Together, their pace suited to his step, the two moved slowly to the
door. It took a long time to make the short journey, though Jenny
supported her father on the one side and he used a stick in his right
hand. In the passage he waited while she blew out his candle; and then
they went forward to the meal. At the approach Pa's eyes opened wider,
and luminously glowed.

"Is there dumplings?" he quivered, seeming to tremble with excitement.

"One for you, Pa!" cried Emmy from the kitchen. Pa gave a small chuckle
of joy. His progress was accelerated. They reached the table, and Emmy
took his right arm for the descent into a substantial chair. Upon Pa's
plate glistened a fair dumpling, a glorious mountain of paste amid the
wreckage of meat and gravy. "And now, perhaps," Emmy went on, smoothing
back from her forehead a little streamer of hair, "you'll close the
door, Jenny...."

It was closed with a bang that made Pa jump and Emmy look savagely up.

"Sorry!" cried Jenny. "How's that dumpling, Pa?" She sat recklessly at
the table.

v

To look at the three of them sitting there munching away was a sight not
altogether pleasing. Pa's veins stood out from his forehead, and the two
girls devoted themselves to the food as if they needed it. There was
none of the airy talk that goes on in the houses of the rich while maids
or menservants come respectfully to right or left of the diners with
decanters or dishes. Here the food was the thing, and there was no
speech. Sometimes Pa's eyes rolled, sometimes Emmy glanced up with
unconscious malevolence at Jenny, sometimes Jenny almost winked at the
lithograph portrait of Edward the Seventh (as Prince of Wales) which
hung over the mantelpiece above the one-and-tenpenny-ha'penny clock that
ticked away so busily there. Something had happened long ago to Edward
the Seventh, and he had a stain across his Field Marshal's uniform.
Something had happened also to the clock, which lay upon its side, as if
kicking in a death agony. Something had happened to almost everything in
the kitchen. Even the plates on the dresser, and the cups and saucers
that hung or stood upon the shelves, bore the noble scars of service.
Every time Emmy turned her glance upon a damaged plate, as sharp as a
stalactite, she had the thought: "Jenny's doing." Every time she looked
at the convulsive clock Emmy said to herself: "T