full brass band.

James Ollerenshaw played the Hallelujah Chorus with much feeling and
expression. He understood the Hallelujah Chorus to its profoundest
depths; which was not surprising in view of the fact that he had been
playing it regularly since before Helen was born. (The unfading charm of
classical music is that you never tire of it.)

Nevertheless, the grandeur of his interpretation of the Hallelujah
Chorus appeared to produce no effect whatever in the scullery; neither
alarm nor ecstasy! And presently, in the midst of a brief pianissimo
passage, James's sensitive ear caught the distant sound of chopping,
which quite marred the soft tenderness at which he had been aiming. He
stopped abruptly. The sound of chopping intrigued his curiosity. What
could she be chopping? He advanced cautiously to the doorway; he had
left the door open. The other door--between the kitchen and the
scullery--which had previously been closed, was now open, so that he
could see from the front room into the scullery. His eager, inquisitive
glance noted a plate of beautiful bread and butter on the tea-table in
the kitchen.

She was chopping the kidney. Utterly absorbed in her task, she had no
suspicion that she was being overlooked. After the chopping of the
kidney, James witnessed a series of operations the key to whose
significance he could not find.

She put a flat pan over the gas, and then took it off again. Then she
picked up an egg, broke it into a coffee-cup, and instantly poured it
out of the coffee-cup into a basin. She did the same to another egg, and
yet another. Four eggs! The entire household stock of eggs! It was