Mr.
Lloyd George at meal-times, or made the slightest attempt to raise the tone of the table-talk above the level of the silliest persiflage, their attention wandered ostentatiously.....
And when he said a few plain truths about Mr.
Barnstaple\'s earning power.
They all cost money, with a cheerful disregard of the fact that everything had gone up except Mr.
They went to bed every night in a storm of uproar: "Haw, Haw, Haw-bump " and their mother seemed to Like it.
They were late for breakfast.
Their hats were everywhere.
His three sons, who were all growing up, seemed to get leggier and larger every day; they sat down in the chairs he was just going to sit down in; they played him off his own pianola; they filled the house with hoarse, vast laughter at jokes that one couldn\'t demand to be told; they cut in on the elderly harmless flirtations that had hitherto been one of his chief consolations in this vale; they beat him at tennis; they fought playfully on the landings, and fell downstairs by twos and threes with an enormous racket.
He was a man of strong natural affections; he loved his family extremely so that he knew it by heart, and when he was in these jaded moods it bored him acutely.
And he was tired of home.
He was overworked.
Barnstaple found himself in urgent need of a holiday, and he had no one to go with and nowhere to go.
Mr
