he afternoon Mr.
Sefton returned to the Park, and in the evening yet again.

Mr. Sefton had a secret that was slowly producing in him misanthropy.
His nature was tropical and his courage arctic, which, coupled with his
forty-five years, was a great obstacle to his happiness. In dress he
was a dandy, at heart he was a craven and, never daring, he was
consumed with his own fire.

The other guests at Galvin House drifted in and out, said the same
things, wore the same clothes, with occasional additions, had the same
thoughts; whilst over all, as if to compose the picture, brooded the
reek of cooking.

The atmosphere of Galvin House was English, the cooking was English,
and the lack of culinary imagination also was English. There were two
and a half menus for the one o'clock Sunday dinner. Roast mutton,
onion sauce, cabbage, potatoes, fruit pie, and custard; alternated for
four weeks with roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, cauliflower, roast
potatoes, and lemon pudding. Then came roast pork, apple sauce,
potatoes, greens with stewed fruit and cheese afterwards.

The cuisine was in itself a calendar. If your first Sunday were a
roast-pork Sunday, you knew without mental effort on every roast-pork
Sunday exactly how many months you had been there. If for a moment you
had forgotten the day, and found yourself toying with a herring at
dinner, you knew it was a Tuesday, just as you knew it was Friday from
the Scotch broth placed before you.

Nobody seemed to mind the dreary reiteration, because everybody was so
occupied in keeping up appearances. Sunday was the day of reckoning
and retrospection. "Were they getting full value for their money?" was
the unuttered question. There were whisperings and grumblings,
sometimes complaints. Then there was another aspect. Each guest had
to enquire if the expenditure were justified by income. All these
things, like the weekly mending, were kept for Sundays.

By tea-time the atmosphere was one of unrest. Mr. Sefton returned from
the Park disappointed, Miss Sikkum from Sunday-school, breathless from
her flight before some alleged admirer, Patricia from her walk,
conscious of a dissatisfaction she could not define. Mr. Cordal awoke
unrefreshed, Mrs. Craske-Morton emerged from her "boudoir," where she
balanced the week's accounts, convinced that ruin stared her in the
face owing to the tonic qualities of Bayswater air, and Mr. Bolton
emerged from _Lloyd's News_ facetious. M