He showed no intention of handing it over; and Sir Chichester replied with as much indifference as he could assume,
"Oh, there's no hurry."
"No, we have all the morning, haven't we?" said Mr. Albany Todd pleasantly.
Sir Chichester ate some breakfast and drank some tea. "No news in your paper is there, Dennis, my boy?" he asked carelessly.
"Oh, isn't there just?" cried Dennis Brown. "Oppifex and Hampstead Darling are both running in the two-thirty at Windsor."
Sir Chichester grunted again.
"Racing! It's wonderful, Mr. Albany Todd, that you haven't got the disease during the week. There's a racing microbe at Rackham."
"But I am not so sure that I have escaped," returned Mr. Albany Todd. "I am tempted to go jumping in the winter."
"You must keep your old Lords out if you do," Harold Jupp urged earnestly. "Bring in your Dukes and your Marquises, and we poor men are all up the spout."
Thus they rattled on about the breakfast table; cigarettes were lighted, Miranda pushed back her chair; in a minute the room would be deserted. But Millie Splay uttered a little cry of horror, so sharp and startling that it froze each person into a sudden immobility. She dropped the newspaper upon her knees. Her hands flew to her face and covered it.