' But before he had caught
the whisper, Philip had tried to press the edge of the leaden spoon into
the shape of jelly. And he felt that the jelly was quite hard. He went
through the form of helping himself, but it was just nothing that he put
on his plate. And he saw that Mr. Noah and Lucy and all the other guests
did the same. Presently another dish was handed to him. There was no
changing of plates. 'They _needn't_,' Philip thought bitterly. This time
it was a fat goose, not carved, and now Philip saw that it was attached
to its dish with glue. Then he understood.

(You know the beautiful but uneatable feasts which are given you in a
white cardboard box with blue binding and fine shavings to pack the
dishes and keep them from breaking? I myself, when I was little, had
such a banquet in a box. There were twelve dishes: a ham, brown and
shapely; a pair of roast chickens, also brown and more anatomical than
the ham; a glazed tongue, real tongue-shape, none of your tinned round
mysteries; a dish of sausages; two handsome fish, a little blue,
perhaps; a joint of beef, ribs I think, very red as to the lean and very
white in the fat parts; a pork pie, delicately bronzed like a traveller
in Central Africa. For sweets I had shapes, shapes of beauty, a jelly
and a cream; a Swiss roll too, and a plum pudding; asparagus there was
also and a cauliflower, and a dish of the greenest peas in all this grey
world. This was my banquet outfit. I remember that the woodenness of it
all depressed us wonderfully; the oneness of dish and food baffled all
make-believe. With the point of nurse's scissors we prised the viands
from the platters. But their wooden nature was unconquerable. One could
not pretend to eat a whole chicken any better when it was detached from
its dish, and the sausages were one solid block. And when you licked the
jelly it only tasted of glue and paint. And when we tried to re-roast
the chickens at the nursery grate, they caught fire, and then they smelt
of gasworks and india-rubber. But I am wandering. When you remember the
things that happened when you were a child, you could go on writing
about them for ever. I will put all this in brackets, and then you need
not read it if you don't want to.)

[Illustration: Mr. Noah whispered ardently, 'Don't!']

But those painted wooden foods adhering firmly to their dishes were the
kind of food of which the banquet now offered to Philip and Lucy was
composed. Only they had more