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 shake her old head at her coming son-in-law, whom she already adored and mothered, with a "Law! what a boy it is!" She wasn't quite sure sometimes as to the soundness of his "doctrine," but wisely decided that her business was rather with his stomach than his brains,--which no doubt God Almighty would look after for himself.
Wit at the expense of Coalchester can only be of interest to Coalchester wits and their butts, so I shall not record the bright and animated talk which helped to digest Mrs.Talbot's rabbit-pie, but confine myself to a practical outcome of it.
What interests me specially about these young men was their rare practicality.

They were no mere dreamers, helpless visionaries, with ideas they had no notion how to embody.