“Dinner?  In a cottage?  Why of course there was no dinner.  There never will be any dinner—­at night, at least.  But the tragic thing is there was no supper.  We didn’t think of it till we began to get hungry.  Annalise began first.  She got hungry at six o’clock, and said something to Fritz—­my uncle about it, but he wasn’t hungry himself then and so he snubbed her.  Now he is hungry himself, and he’s gone out to see if he can’t find a cook.  It’s very stupid.  There’s nothing in the house.  Annalise ate the bread and things she found.  She’s upstairs now, crying.”  And Priscilla’s lips twitched as she looked at Tussie’s concerned face, and she began to laugh.

He seized his hat.  “I’ll go and get you something,” he said, dashing at the door.

“I can’t think what, at this time of the night.  The only shop shuts at seven.”

“I’ll make them open it.”

“They go to bed at nine.”

“I’ll get them out of bed if I have to shie stones at their windows all night.”

“Don’t go without your coat—­you’ll catch a most frightful cold.”

He put his arm through the door to take it, and vanished in the fog.  He did not put on the coat in his agitation, but kept it over his arm.  His comforter stayed in Priscilla’s parlour, on the chair where he had flung it.  He was in evening dress, and his throat was sore already with the cold that was coming on and that he had caught, as he expected, running races on the Sunday at Priscilla’s children’s party.

Priscilla went back to her seat by the fire, and thought very hard about things like bread.  It would of course be impossible that she should have reached this state of famine only because one meal had been missed; but she had eaten nothing all day,—­disliked the Baker’s Farm breakfast too much even to look at it, forgotten the Baker’s Farm dinner because she was just moving into her cottage, and at tea had been too greatly upset by the unexpected appearance of her father on the wall to care to eat the bread and butter Annalise brought in.  Now she was in that state when you tremble and feel cold.  She had told Annalise, about half-past seven, to bring her the bread left from tea, but Annalise had eaten it.  At half-past eight she had told Annalise to bring her the sugar, for she had read somewhere that if you eat enough sugar it takes away the desire even of the hungriest for other food, but Annalise, who had eaten the sugar as well, said that the Herr Geheimrath must have eaten it.  It certainly was not there, and neither was the Herr Geheimrath to defend himself; since half-past seven he had been out looking for a cook, his mind pervaded by the idea that if only he could get a cook food would follow in her wake as naturally as flowers follow after rain.  Priscilla fretting in her chair that he should stay away so long saw very clearly that no cook could help them.  What is the use of a cook in a house where there is nothing to cook?  If only Fritzing would come back quickly with a great many loaves of bread!  The door was opened a little way and somebody’s knuckles knocked.  She thought it was Tussie, quick and clever as ever, and in a voice full of welcome told him to come in; upon which in stepped Robin Morrison very briskly, delighted by the warmth of the invitation.  “Why now this is nice,” said Robin, all smiles.