We sat down.  The room was lighted by four candles, on the table.  I am rather short-sighted, and so I did not immediately notice that there were low book-cases all round the walls.  Why the presence of these book-cases should have caused me a certain astonishment I do not know, but it did.  I thought of Knype station, and the scenery, and then the other little station, and the desert of pots and cinders, and the mud in the road and on the pavement and in the hall, and the baby-linen in the bathroom, and three children all down with mumps, and Mr Brindley’s cap and knickerbockers and cigarettes; and somehow the books—­I soon saw there were at least a thousand of them, and not circulating-library books, either, but books—­well, they administered a little shock to me.

To Mr Brindley’s right hand was a bottle of Bass and a corkscrew.

‘Beer!’ he exclaimed, with solemn ecstasy, with an ecstasy gross and luscious.  And, drawing the cork, he poured out a glass, with fine skill in the management of froth, and pushed it towards me.

‘No, thanks,’ I said.

‘No beer!’ he murmured, with benevolent, puzzled disdain.  ‘Whisky?’

‘No, thanks,’ I said.  ‘Water.’

‘I know what Mr Loring would like,’ said Mrs Brindley, jumping up.  ‘I know what Mr Loring would like.’  She opened a cupboard and came back to the table with a bottle, which she planted in front of me.  ‘Wouldn’t you, Mr Loring?’

It was a bottle of mercurey, a wine which has given me many dreadful dawns, but which I have never known how to refuse.

‘I should,’ I admitted; ‘but it’s very bad for me.’

‘Nonsense!’ said she.  She looked at her husband in triumph.

‘Beer!’ repeated Mr Brindley with undiminished ecstasy, and drank about two-thirds of a glass at one try.  Then he wiped the froth from his moustache.  ‘Ah!’ he breathed low and soft.  ‘Beer!’

They called the meal supper.  The term is inadequate.  No term that I can think of would be adequate.  Of its kind the thing was perfect.  Mrs Brindley knew that it was perfect.  Mr Brindley also knew that it was perfect.  There were prawns in aspic.  I don’t know why I should single out that dish, except that it seemed strange to me to have crossed the desert of pots and cinders in order to encounter prawns in aspic.  Mr Brindley ate more cold roast beef than I had ever seen any man eat before, and more pickled walnuts.  It is true that the cold roast beef transcended all the cold roast beef of my experience.  Mrs Brindley regaled herself largely on trifle, which Mr Brindley would not approach, preferring a most glorious Stilton cheese.  I lost touch, temporarily, with the intellectual life.  It was Mr Brindley who recalled me to it.

‘Jane,’ he said. (This was at the beef and pickles stage.)

No answer.

‘Jane!’

Mrs Brindley turned to me.  ‘My name is not Jane,’ she said, laughing, and making a moue simultaneously.  ’He only calls me that to annoy me.  I told him I wouldn’t answer to it, and I won’t.  He thinks I shall give in because we’ve got “company”!  But I won’t treat you as “company”, Mr Loring, and I shall expect you to take my side.  What dreadful weather we’re having, aren’t we?’