Mabel broke the silence.

“And your speech to-morrow?” she asked, taking up her fork.

Oliver brightened a little, and began to discourse.

It seemed that Birmingham was beginning to fret.  They were crying out once more for free trade with America:  European facilities were not enough, and it was Oliver’s business to keep them quiet.  It was useless, he proposed to tell them, to agitate until the Eastern business was settled:  they must not bother the Government with such details just now.  He was to tell them, too, that the Government was wholly on their side; that it was bound to come soon.

“They are pig-headed,” he added fiercely; “pig-headed and selfish; they are like children who cry for food ten minutes before dinner-time:  it is bound to come if they will wait a little.”

“And you will tell them so?”

“That they are pig-headed?  Certainly.”

Mabel looked at her husband with a pleased twinkle in her eyes.  She knew perfectly well that his popularity rested largely on his outspokenness:  folks liked to be scolded and abused by a genial bold man who danced and gesticulated in a magnetic fury; she liked it herself.

“How shall you go?” she asked.

“Volor.  I shall catch the eighteen o’clock at Blackfriars; the meeting is at nineteen, and I shall be back at twenty-one.”

He addressed himself vigorously to his entree, and his mother looked up with a patient, old-woman smile.

Mabel began to drum her fingers softly on the damask.

“Please make haste, my dear,” she said; “I have to be at Brighton at three.”

Oliver gulped his last mouthful, pushed his plate over the line, glanced to see if all plates were there, and then put his hand beneath the table.

Instantly, without a sound, the centre-piece vanished, and the three waited unconcernedly while the clink of dishes came from beneath.

Old Mrs. Brand was a hale-looking old lady, rosy and wrinkled, with the mantilla head-dress of fifty years ago; but she, too, looked a little depressed this morning.  The entree was not very successful, she thought; the new food-stuff was not up to the old, it was a trifle gritty:  she would see about it afterwards.  There was a clink, a soft sound like a push, and the centre-piece snapped into its place, bearing an admirable imitation of a roasted fowl.

Oliver and his wife were alone again for a minute or two after breakfast before Mabel started down the path to catch the 14-1/2 o’clock 4th grade sub-trunk line to the junction.

“What’s the matter with mother?” he said.

“Oh! it’s the food-stuff again:  she’s never got accustomed to it; she says it doesn’t suit her.”

“Nothing else?”

“No, my dear, I am sure of it.  She hasn’t said a word lately.”