“Bless us!” said Mrs Machin.

“Bless us!” said Mrs Cotterill (doubtless the force of example).

They descended to the dining-room, where a supper-table had been laid by order of the invisible Mr Cecil Wilbraham.  And there the ladies lauded Mr Wilbraham’s wisdom in eschewing silver.  Everything of the table service that could be of earthenware was of earthenware.  The forks and spoons were electro-plate.

“Why,” Mrs Cotterill said, “I could run this house without a servant and have myself tidy by ten o’clock in a morning.”

And Mrs Machin nodded.

“And then when you want a regular turn-out, as you call it,” said Denry, “there’s the vacuum-cleaner.”

The vacuum-cleaner was at that period the last word of civilisation, and the first agency for it was being set up in Bursley.  Denry explained the vacuum-cleaner to the housewives, who had got no further than a Ewbank.  And they again called down blessings on themselves.

“What price this supper?” Denry exclaimed.  “We ought to eat it.  I’m sure he’d like us to eat it.  Do sit down, all of you.  I’ll take the consequences.”

Mrs Machin hesitated even more than the other ladies.

“It’s really very strange, him not being here.”  She shook her head.

“Don’t I tell you he’s quite mad,” said Denry.

“I shouldn’t think he was so mad as all that,” said Mrs Machin, dryly.  “This is the most sensible kind of a house I’ve ever seen.”

“Oh!  Is it?” Denry answered.  “Great Scott!  I never noticed those three bottles of wine on the sideboard.”

At length he succeeded in seating them at the table.  Thenceforward there was no difficulty.  The ample and diversified cold supper began to disappear steadily, and the wine with it.  And as the wine disappeared so did Mr Cotterill (who had been pompous and taciturn) grow talkative, offering to the company the exact figures of the cost of the house, and so forth.  But ultimately the sheer joy of life killed arithmetic.

Mrs Machin, however, could not quite rid herself of the notion that she was in a dream that outraged the proprieties.  The entire affair, for an unromantic spot like Bursley, was too fantastically and wickedly romantic.

“We must be thinking about home, Denry,” said she.

“Plenty of time,” Denry replied.  “What!  All that wine gone!  I’ll see if there’s any more in the sideboard.”

He emerged, with a red face, from bending into the deeps of the enamelled sideboard, and a wine-bottle was in his triumphant hand.  It had already been opened.

“Hooray!” he proclaimed, pouring a white wine into his glass and raising the glass:  “here’s to the health of Mr Cecil Wilbraham.”

He made a brave tableau in the brightness of the electric light.

Then he drank.  Then he dropped the glass, which broke.

“Ugh!  What’s that?” he demanded, with the distorted features of a gargoyle.