and let us talk over the plan of campaign."




CHAPTER VIII


THE PLOT AGAINST COALCHESTER

Old Mrs. Talbot had been prepared for some such invasion, and had an
excellent rabbit-pie awaiting them. There was a delightful trait of old
Mrs. Talbot's which I would like to record, a curious chronological
method of remembering great occasions and startling events by the food
of the day. Thus, for example, when with eyes that would still fill with
tears, though it was ten years ago, she would tell the story of how her
only boy had been brought home dead one night from an accident at his
workshop, she would fix the date by saying, "It was about six o'clock at
night, and I'd just got a nice little bit of liver and bacon cooking for
your father's dinner, when there came a knock at the door ..."
Sometimes it was, "I'd just sent Liz out for a little bit of fish," or
it would be Spanish onions maybe, or a lovely little rabbit, that
marked the day.

The night when the attack on Coalchester was planned was marked, as I
have said, by rabbit-pie. Mrs. Talbot would hardly have understood the
significance of that rabbit-pie, though in the course of her occasional
bobbings in and out of the room, to see that the young men were doing
justice to her food,--she had a curious notion that young men never ate
enough,--she would hear snatches of what she called "deep talk," or