"Ready to light," I answered. "I came to find you."
"Then let's go, for it isn't good to ponder over questions of state before breakfast."
"What is it?" I asked, as we turned back. "Why won't you trust me to settle it?"
Another laugh, more full of pathos, was my answer; nor would she speak again—because of some mischief in her mind, I believed—until, preparing the ambrosial corncakes, she rather abruptly exclaimed:
"I wonder if you deserve any breakfast this morning?"
"Why?" I cried, in feigned alarm.
"Because of your impoliteness."
"My impoliteness was doubtless the need of breakfast. But when was I impolite? I don't remember, honest!"
"Of course, you don't; how could you," she went on rather indifferently. "Were you not such a capable Chancellor I might be more offended. I am tryingly stupid at times, but to be in the very middle of a sentence and discover that the man I'm talking to is fast asleep, is humiliating, to say the least."
Did she think there was a chance of putting over that atrocious yarn on me—of bluffing me into an admission that I had been the first to fall asleep?