"We all feel the same when we're on orderly duties, Mr Rock. We'd really miss you if you didn't drop in of a morning."
"I think Daisy's sweet," Margot said.
"Will you ask me for a dance, Mr Rock?"
"They only played waltzes, too, when you were young, Mr Rock, didn't they?"
"I think they might let us have something else besides," one of them put forward.
"Like a tango," she said. "They still have those in the smaller halls."
"Enough's enough," the sage announced. Several of the girls began to giggle. They were not to know this, but he was referring to his digestion.
"I think it a shame," Mrs Blain brought out, in a warning voice. But the younger ones could not stop, behind hands they had over their mouths.
"I don't know what's so comical, I'm sure," Mrs Blain said in reproof, and then the old man realised from their flushed faces that they were laughing at him.
"I shouldn't pay attention," Mr Rock commented.
"Oh we don't," they answered, still giggling.
"To me," he said. They stopped. "I'm only on sufferance here, you know," he said, with a satisfied bitterness.
"Oh Mr Rock," they cried.
"I think it a shame," Mrs Blain announced, brightly. "Now then," she called out. "Let’s get goin'." And in a moment the old and famous man was left alone at table, altogether blinded by increasing brightness, before an empty plate and a cup that was warm, behind a rumbling stomach, left to dread the journey back with full buckets.
When Sebastian Birt came into the staff breakfast parlour he found he was first. He did not look out on the bright daylight but under the dish cover on a hot plate. He took no scrambled egg.
He poured himself a cup of tea. He was sitting down to this when Miss Winstanley entered. He did not rise. He said to her, in what he imagined to be the manner of a State executive, for he was always in a part, "Well, well," he said, rubbed hands together.
"Morning, Sebastian," she said. "It'll be a lovely day."
"So it is, so it is."
"But I thought you'd got off for the night," she went on, and helped herself at the side table, paying attention to how he acted.
"Couldn't fit it in, unexpectedly detained, these trade delegations from the North," he answered, to keep up the pretence. But he did not look away from his cup. As he was fat, and very short, he seemed a small boy. It was not at this that Miss Winstanley tenderly laughed.
"And is the guv'nor to let you come to the dance tonight?"
"There are, or rather were, two governors," he replied, this time, all at once, in the part of the sort of lecturer he was not. "The Governor of the Bank of England, abolished as such long since, then the governor of the local poor law institution, or poor house, known to each one of you, if not from personal experience, then at least by report, and a factor in our civilization that we have yet to eradicate." He raised his voice in mockery while he watched his cup. "To pull out by the roots," he ended.
"Edge?" Miss Winstanley prompted.
"The functions are so similar," he replied. "They may readily be confused. The best mind can fail to distinguish between Edge and the common or garden workmaster. Where similar functions are operated in dissimilar environments which may yet have factors common to both. ." and here he paused, at a loss perhaps. This gave her time to put over, "I know all that, but are you coming?"
"I should really see my secretary, let me just glance at my book," he replied, in the character of an executive once more. "I cannot be rushed willy nilly into appointments." A silence fell. Then she thought of something.
"Look here," she said, "you put yourself down as not to want breakfast."
"Tchk, tchk," he answered, still the State manager. "What has my girl been about?" For the first time he looked slyly at Miss Winstanley. But she reached for the butter, and did not notice. When he went on, as he did at once, it was with lowered eyes once more.
"They will allow themselves to be pressed. Not in a trouser press, ha, ha, I should hope not indeed. But they will lose their pretty heads over the telephone. When calls really begin coming in, they won't simply lay the receivers down off the hooks to have time to think, they will persist with answers till they get more and more flurried. Then the harm's done, the mistake is made, and I'm landed for an engagement I can't possibly. ."
"But there isn't a breakfast for you, Sebastian," she interrupted.
"I shall decline to take one of theirs, even if pressed," he answered, perhaps in reference to his colleagues who, this holiday morn, must be enjoying a long lie abed. "I know better than to get the wrong side of Mrs Blain," he explained, rather more soberly. Then he went on, back in the part once more.
"I always say, as a matter of fact I insist in the office, that we are all members of a team, helping others to help themselves."
"It's all very well, but there'll be a cup and saucer short, Sebastian."
"Well I can wash mine, can't I?" he demanded, falsetto now. "And my lipstick's lovely. It never comes off."
"You'd better," she said. "I don't use any, as you could tell if you looked."
At this moment, when Sebastian might not have known how to reply, for he was a shy fellow, Dakers, the law tutor, came in.
"Morning all," the man said.
"Hullo Sebastian. I thought we were not to have the honour this forenoon. D'you know I almost fancy it may eventually turn out to be rather a fine day."
"It's like this, Dakers," Winstanley said. "The lad here was detained. Calls on his time have been heavy of late," she explained, with malice. Mr Birt pettishly frowned into his cup at this open allusion to the hours he spent with Elizabeth.
"The guv'nor consulted me last night," Dakers said. He had not missed the implications in Winstanley's last remark. He had a particular sort of loyalty towards the young woman. He wished to warn them both.
"Edge? Consulted you? What on earth about?" Winstanley asked.
"Oh, she wanted me to run through the original Directive from the Ministry, which relates to the cottage held by our fabulous pensioner, Rock," Mr Dakers explained. Seated up to the table, he was now engaged in rather nervously rearranging the knives and forks on each side of a porridge plate.
"And which shelters his granddaughter Elizabeth," Mr Birt added, still with his highest falsetto, but which had an edge to it, a squeal of unease.
"The unremunerated opinion of a lawyer is not worth a rap," Dakers assured them, raising the spoon at last. "But I had to tell her, and, since no-one else is here, I'll pass it on." Then he broke off to put some porridge in his mouth. "I don't think we have a leg to stand on. It's his for life," he said.
"How Machiavellian," Birt exclaimed shrilly. "You mean he can defy each and every one, the guv'nor included? Well, everything's perfect then, isn't it?"
"What I mean, and why I chose this moment, is that she'll cast about her to find some other way out, my dear fellow."
A grey line of milk escaped from a corner of his mouth. He dabbed at it, as though he had cut himself shaving.
They prudently joined together to change the topic, did not refer to it again.
When Mr Rock got back to his cottage from the house he was tired and out of breath, because the swill buckets had been particularly heavy this fine morning. He noticed the postman had called and bent down with a groan to pick some envelopes off the mat. He always paid his small bills in cash with the result that his correspondence, which came to about half a dozen letters every day, was made up of complimentary resolutions passed by various scientific societies, letters from students, or maniacs and so on; at least that is what Mr Rock believed, because, for some years now, this distinguished man had not opened a single one of the communications he received. Instead he always put them unexamined into a travelling trunk which was on the floor just inside the living room, and which he used for nothing else. He sat down on it today, looked at each envelope back and front because he expected to hear the result of the election. But there was no trace of an O.M.S. (On Majesty's Service; they had left out the His, long since, as being unworthy of the times). On the other hand there was a private letter which might be from young Hargreaves. But then, Mr Rock asked himself, what point could there be in finding out, it would not advantage him in what he termed his battle for the place, the roof here; and wouldn't it rather weaken his resolve if he knew which way the election went? After all, his attitude was sound. More than that, it was straightforward, which could not be said of the cruel posturing taken up by those two Babylonian harlots, Baker and Edge up there, who schemed day and night, never actually to come out in the open because they knew very well they would never venture, but who, with a tireless industry, neglected their trivial duties to machinate against him, to play with his girl's reason even, and who fell so low as to work on her sentiments with truly Byzantine malice by the use of a tutor they had no wish to retain, or other pretext to expel, the lout.