Brodie ate hungrily and with obvious enjoyment. He was an enormous man, over six feet in height and with the shoulders and neck of a bull. His head was massive, his grey eyes small and deep set, his jaw hard and so resolutely muscular that as he chewed, large firm knobs rose up and subsided rhythmically under the smooth brown jowl. The face itself was broad and strong and would have been

noble but for the insufficient depth of the forehead and the narrow spacing of the eyes. A heavy brown moustache covered his upper lip, partly hiding the mouth; but beneath this glossy mask his lower lip protruded with a full and sullen arrogance.

His hands were huge, and upon the backs of these and also of the thick spatulate fingers dark hairs grew profusely. The knife and fork gripped in that stupendous grasp seemed, in comparison, foolishly toyish and inept.

Now that Brodie had commenced to eat it was permissible for the others to begin, although for them, of course, there was only a plain tea; and Grandma Brodie led the way by fastening avidly upon her soft toast. Sometimes, when her son was in a particularly amiable humour, he would boisterously help her to small titbits from his plate, but to-night she knew from his demeanour that this rare treat

would not come her way, and she resignedly abandoned herself to such limited savour as the food at her disposal provided. The others began to partake of the meal in their own fashion. Nessie ate the simple food heartily, Mary absent-mindedly, while Mrs. Brodie, who had privately consumed a small collation an hour before, trifled with the burnt bread upon her plate with the air of one who is too frail, too obsessed by the consideration of others, to eat.

An absolute silence maintained, broken only by the sucking sound which accompanied the application of the moustache cup to the paternal lips, the clanking of Grandma's antiquated dentures as she sought to extract the fullest enjoyment and nutriment from the meal, and an occasional sniff from Mamma's refractory nose.