"No, I don't mean that at all," said my wife hastily. "You quite misunderstand me. Of course everyone is to have as much, quite as much, food as he wants."

"Stop a bit. Does that mean as much as he likes?" I asked.

"Or as much as his system requires?" suggested the Reverend Henry.

"Or as much as he can contain?" demanded Sinclair. "It may seem to be a fine point, but I think we ought to have it cleared up."

The hostess resumed: "Everyone is to have as much as he likes, certainly. Of course he is. We are not going to be inhospitable. On the contrary, we are prepared to share our last crust. But there must be absolutely no waste."

There was a short pause. No one was inclined to demur to that proposition. The Reverend Henry alone had doubts.

"It is difficult at a time like this, you know," he began mildly, "to be quite certain that you are doing the right thing. If you stop all waste in your household are you sure that you may not be encouraging unemployment? If you don't waste biscuits it follows that fewer biscuits are made and therefore——"

The Reverend Henry was adjudged to be on the wrong tack and his protest was swept aside.

"Breakfast now," my wife began briskly, bringing into action her block of notepaper and fountain-pen. "All that I want to know—I wouldn't dream of stinting you—is—how much do you intend to eat?"

She looked round expectantly, the pen poised in her hand. There was rather an awkward pause. The question seemed at first blush a little indelicate. Sinclair tried to temporize.

"But wait a bit," he said. "Can't the servants manage to consume——"

"The servants breakfast long before you are up, Mr. Sinclair," my wife reminded him.

"It's perfectly simple," said I, suddenly taking the floor; "I think it an admirable idea, the essence of good citizenship. What we have got to do is to declare our appetites overnight so that every man eats the food he has booked and we make a clean sweep. Book me for two eggs and a kipper."

"Sorry there are no kippers to-morrow," said my wife. "Boiled eggs, bacon and kidneys and mushrooms."

"It would be wrong to suppose that I do not consider it a wise and indeed public-spirited idea in every way," said the Reverend Henry after some reflection, "but it is a little difficult, you know. It depends so much upon how one sleeps and what one feels like, and what sort of morning it is, and the letters that come, and the war news."

"And on the temperature of one's tub," added Sinclair. "For my part I eat a lot at breakfast. I don't feel that I have the face to advertise the whole catalogue in this sort of way. It's too cold-blooded. Besides, I fluctuate like anything."

"Come on," said I. "You fellows are simply trying to shirk the thing. I declare two eggs, no bacon and three mushrooms, assuming an average size for mushrooms. One cup and a half of coffee. Three lumps in all."

"Well, that's a fairly good lead," said Sinclair. "I propose to double you on mushrooms and I should like to be put down for a kidney. What about you, Henry?"

"Nothing but one rasher of bacon, please," said Henry meekly. "I am never hungry in the morning and I have always wanted to know how much bacon there is in a rasher. A single cup of tea, no sugar, but plenty of cream."

My wife had been writing busily. Now she looked up. "What about toast?" she enquired.

"You are going into details," said Sinclair approvingly. "Doesn't it rather depend on the size of the slice? You may enter me for a couple of slices, three by two. And jam—no, marmalade. An ounce of marmalade."

"Do be quiet while I add it up," said my wife, for Sinclair was causing a lot of confusion by trying to barter a brace of mushrooms against my second egg (or at least to hold an option on the egg) in case he changed his mind before the morning. "And now I'll just send this to the kitchen, and then I'll go to bed."

It never really panned out well. On the first morning a very awkward thing happened. My wife, in her zeal to provide for her guests, had omitted to count herself in. We had to make a subscription for her, and it must be said that a splendid response was forthcoming, Sinclair nobly renouncing his kidney. But the result was that lunch had to be put half-an-hour earlier, and the day was disorganised.

On the second morning, the Rev. Henry was down early and bagged all my toast, while Sinclair, who had slept badly, refused to meet his obligations in the matter of kedjeree.

By the third day there was a good deal of unseemly barter and exchange going on, and Sinclair made a corner in eggs. "The trouble is," he explained, "that you never really know how good a thing is till you see it. Overnight a sardine on toast means nothing to me; and it was never announced that these eggs were going to be poached."

On the fourth day the scheme was tottering. Sinclair had actually been for a walk before breakfast and was consequently making an unsuccessful tour of the table in quest of extra toast. He then looked for the second time under the little blue blanket that keeps the eggs warm and peered disconsolately into the coffee pot. And then he struck.

"I'm afraid we shall have to chuck it," he announced. "We mean well, but it doesn't work."

My wife was a good deal taken aback, but Sinclair went on to prove his case.

"We are trying to avoid waste," he said. "Well, we may have eliminated a certain amount of—let us say material waste, but we are causing, on the other hand, the most deplorable moral waste. Henry and I were simply not on speaking terms yesterday after he scooped my marmalade under my very nose, and as for Charles" (that is myself) "he is simply out for loot. He gets down before the gong. And this is essentially a time to heal all differences and stand shoulder to shoulder."

"But I can't have waste," said my wife, who likes to stick to her point. "If things are left over there is no one to eat them."

"It will give me great pleasure," the Reverend Henry broke in eagerly, "to present you with a couple of live pigs—the animal kind, I mean."