From some unseen abyss fat Anne's voice thundered to Phil that his breakfast was waitin' on him, an' if he didn't come to it there were dogs in plenty, as she would not be disorganized with the table led all night.
"Wasn't I in ten minnits ago an' not a sign of it?" replied Phil pleasantly. "So I to run out with these two, Anne; put me bit of bacon on the range, Anne Macree, till I gits in to it."
Anne Macree replied fierily in a voice of complete good-humour that it was Cragsbread his likes should be gettin', same as the Germans, and that there was a few cakes in the oven for the upstairs breakfast which he could have if he'd hurry up, himself an' his Macrees.
A shaft of light came through the grey clouds, making a bar of silver on the steely sea; the sky, travelling quickly, now showed little flecks of blue and flaws of pearly white. Yesterday's cold wind had gone.
"It's heavenly," Psyche whispered. "It is nearly ten, and at the Larches Miss Eva would now be seeing which fish was the cheapest, and ordering a warm joint which would go out to the kitchen for luncheon. And it would be batter-pudding day."
"You love it, Sprite!" Gheena came running round from the stables, her clear brown skin flushed, her bare head ruffled.
"I want to live here." The English girl looked out with her pale bluey-green eyes. "I want never to leave. I want to learn the difference between squirrels and foxes, and how to sit on at jumps, and why the hounds yowl for a time and then don't say anything."
"And I"--Gheena looked out--"I want to live here sometimes, but I want to travel, and to see France and Italy and further away still, and hunt somewhere else where it's flat going, and just be here in the summer or in the autumn, but not always."
Dearest George, who came from hermetically-sealed rooms, and was consequently very chilly in the mornings, now called out that Mona would catch a bad chill if she did not at once come in.
A roaring fire mocked at economy in the long dining-room. Anne's preparations for a visitor smoked in various forms. She had what she called loosed her hand at hot bread and produced three varieties.
Psyche ate an unsprite-like breakfast, listening thoughtfully to her host's prophetic warnings of financial downfall and the general muddle of England at war.