The wedding breakfast consisted of part of a leg of mutton that Jane Sarah had told the Bratts they might have, pikelets purchased from a street hawker, coffee, scrambled eggs, biscuits, butter, burgundy out of the cellar, potatoes out of the cellar, cheese, sardines, and a custard that Alice made with custard-powder.  Herbert had to go out to buy the bread, the butter, the sardines and some milk; when he returned with these purchases, a portion of the milk being in his breast pocket, Alice checked them, and exhibited a mild surprise that he had not done something foolish, and told him to clear out of “her kitchen.”

Her kitchen was really the back kitchen or scullery.  The proper kitchen had always been used as a dining-room.  But Alice had set the table in the parlour, at the front of the house, where food had never before been eaten.  At the first blush this struck Herbert as sacrilege; but Alice said she didn’t like the middle room, because it was dark and because there was a china pig on the high mantelpiece; and really Herbert could discover no reason for not eating in the parlour.  So they ate in the parlour.  Before the marvellous repast was over Alice had rearranged all the ornaments and chairs in that parlour, turned round the carpet, and patted the window curtains into something new and strange.  Herbert frequently looked out of the window to see if his uncle was coming.

“Pity there’s no dessert,” said Herbert.  It was three o’clock, and the refection was drawing to a reluctant close.

“There is a dessert,” said Alice.  She ran upstairs, and came down with her little black hand-bag, out of which she produced three apples and four sponge-cakes, meant for the railway journey.  Amazing woman!  Yet in resuming her seat she mistook Herbert’s knee for her chair.  Amazing woman!  Intoxicating mixture of sweet confidingness and unfailing resource.  And Si had wanted to prevent Herbert from marrying this pearl!

“Now I must wash up!” said she.

“I’ll run out and telegraph to Jane Sarah to come back at once.  I expect she’s gone to her sister’s at Rat Edge.  It’s absurd for you to be doing all the work like this.”  Thus Herbert.

“I can manage by myself till to-morrow,” Alice decided briefly.

Then there was a rousing knock at the door, and Alice sprang up, as it were, guiltily.  Recovering herself with characteristic swiftness, she went to the window and spied delicately out.

“It’s Mrs Bratt,” she whispered.  “I’ll go.”

“Shall I go?” Herbert asked.

“No—­I’ll go,” said Alice.

And she went—­apron and all.

Herbert overheard the conversation.

“Oh!” Exclamation of feigned surprise from Mrs Bratt.

“Yes?” In tones of a politeness almost excessive.

“Is Mr Herbert meaning to come to our house to-night?  That there bedroom’s all ready.”

“I don’t think so,” said Alice.  “I don’t think so.”