Explore "Colin" by E.F. Benson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Breakfast at Stanier was a shade less stately than dinner. The table was invariably laid for the complete tale of its possible consumers, and a vicarious urn bubbled at the end of the board with an empty teapot in front of it, in case of old Lady Yardley coming down to breakfast and dispensing tea. She had not come down for over twenty years, but the urn still awaited her ministrations.
On the arrival of tidings that she was having breakfast in her room, the urn was taken away, and if news filtered through the butler to the footman that some one else was breakfasting upstairs, a place at the table was removed. Hot dishes above spirit-lamps stood in a row on the sideboard, and there remained till somebody had come down or till, from the removal of knives and forks, it was clear that nobody was coming.