Pamela was determined to be pleased.

“How right it all is,” she told herself—­“so entirely in keeping.  All so clean and—­and sufficient.  I am sure all the things we hang on ourselves and round ourselves to please and beautify are very clogging—­this is life at its simplest,” and she rang for coffee, which came in a breakfast-cup and was made of Somebody’s essence and boiling water.

Pamela had gone to bed very early, there being absolutely nothing to sit up for; and the bed was as hard as the nether millstone.  As she put her tired head on a cast-iron pillow covered by a cotton pillow-slip, and lay crushed under three pairs of hard blankets, topped by a patchwork quilt worked by Bella’s mother and containing samples of the clothes of all the family—­from the late Mrs. Bathgate’s wedding-gown of puce-coloured cashmere to her youngest son’s first pair of “breeks,” the whole smelling strongly of naphtha from the kist where it had lain—­regretful thoughts of other beds came to her.  She felt she had not fully appreciated them—­those warm, soft, embracing beds, with satin-smooth sheets and pillow-cases smelling of lavender and other sweet things, feather-light blankets, and rose-coloured eiderdowns.

She came downstairs in the morning to the bleak sitting-room filled with a distaste for simplicity which she felt to be unworthy.  For breakfast there was a whole loaf on a platter, three breakfast rolls hot from the baker, and the family toast-rack full of tough, damp toast.  A large pale-green duck’s egg sat heavily in an egg-cup, capped, but not covered, by a strange red flannel thing representing a cock’s head, which Pamela learned later was called an “egg-cosy” and had come from the sale of work for Foreign Missions.  A metal teapot and water-jug stood in two green worsted nests.

Pamela poured herself out some tea.  “I’m almost sure I told her I wanted coffee in the morning,” she murmured to herself, “but it doesn’t matter.”  Already she was beginning to hold Bella Bathgate in awe.  She took the top off the duck’s egg and looked at it in an interested way.  “It’s a beautiful colour—­orange—­but”—­she pushed it away—­“I don’t think I can eat it.”

She drank some tea and ate a baker’s roll, which was excellent; then she rang the bell.

When Bella appeared she at once noticed the headless but uneaten egg, and, taking it up, smelt it.

“What’s wrang wi’ the egg?” she demanded.

“Oh, nothing,” said Pamela quickly.  “It’s a lovely egg really, such a beautiful colour, but”—­she laughed apologetically—­“you know how it is with eggs—­either you can eat them or you can’t.  I always have to eat eggs with my head turned away so to speak.  There is something about the yolk so—­so——­” Her voice trailed away under Miss Bathgate’s stolid, unsmiling gaze.

There was no point in going on being arch about eggs to a person who so obviously regarded one as a poor creature.  But a stand must be taken.