There is a story of Bransby Williams, famous impersonator of Dickens's
characters, which will come home to many of us in these days of food
shortage.
He had a hard time before he "arrived," and hunger was a familiar
companion. One night he had to play in a sketch in which he was supposed
to consume a steak pudding.
"Imagine my surprise," he says, "when a real, good, smoking hot steak
and kidney pudding arrived on the scene. 'My eye!' I exclaimed to
myself. I had to cut it and serve it, and in the ordinary course of
events we should have got through this stage meal in about five or six
minutes.
"But not to-night! I made up my mind that that pudding should not be
wasted, but eaten, and I commenced in earnest. I made the best meal I
had had for days, and improvised conversation till it was all polished
off!"