She knew perfectly well that his popularity rested largely on his outspokenness: folks liked to be scolded and abused by a genial bold man who danced and gesticulated in a magnetic fury; she liked it herself.
"How shall you go ?" she asked.
"Volor.

I shall catch the eighteen o'clock at Blackfriars; the meeting is at nineteen, and I shall be back at twenty-one." He addressed himself vigorously to his _entree_, and his mother looked up with a patient, old-woman smile.
Mabel began to drum her fingers softly on the damask.
"Please make haste, my dear," she said; "I have to be at Brighton at three." Oliver gulped his last mouthful, pushed his plate over the line, glanced to see if all plates were there, and then put his hand beneath the table.
Instantly, without a sound, the centre-piece vanished, and the three waited unconcernedly while the clink of dishes came from beneath.
Old Mrs.Brand was a hale-looking old lady, rosy and wrinkled, with the mantilla head-dress of fifty years ago; but she, too, looked a little depressed this morning.

The _entree_ was not very successful, she thought; the new food-stuff was not up to the old, it was a trifle gritty: she would see about it afterwards.

There was a clink, a soft sound like a push, and the centre-piece snapped into its place, bearing an admirable imitation of a roasted fowl.
Oliver and his wife were alone again for a minute or two after breakfast before Mabel started down the path to catch the 14-1/2 o'clock 4th grade sub-trunk line to the junction.
"What's the matter with mother ?" he said.
"Oh! it's the food-stuff again: she's never got accustomed to it; she says it doesn't suit her." "Nothing else ?" "No, my dear, I am sure of it.

She hasn't said a word lately." Oliver watched his wife go down the path, reassured.