"Oh, damn breakfast! No."
"Well, sit down and have some, if Mrs. Giles," glanced at the little woman, who was hovering round the fire, "permits."
"I'll set another cup and plate at once, sir," she said, evidently fluttered at the idea of entertaining a real live lord, "but I'm afraid, sir, that eggs and bacon and tea ain't what the young gentleman's used to."
"I don't know anything better," said Cannington graciously, and soon was occupied industriously in filling up. "And I do call it beastly," he said between mouthfuls, "that I should have been out of all the fun. If I'd only come along with you, Vance----"
"You'd have been arrested, as I am," I finished.
"Oh, come now, that's a bit too thick. You didn't rob this woman, or murder her for one of your melodramas, did you?"
"Who said she was murdered?" I asked, taking another cup of tea.
"That blighter who came this morning."
"How the deuce does he know? The murder was only found out after he went to Murchester. Everyone--myself included--thought that it was merely robbery of a glass eye."
"A glass eye!" Cannington stared. "Who the deuce would steal a glass eye?"