Maynard greeted his arrival with, “That’s right, Prescott, you’re just in time to help me; there is the gridiron, put the steak on while I see about the coffee.”
For some time there was little conversation. Prescott was fully occupied with his culinary charge, and Maynard in the preparation of the coffee; the apparatus being one of those beautifully-scientific inventions, which, while they produce no doubt an excellent result, demand incessant attention, and are liable, in the event of the least thing going wrong, to explode with disastrous consequences. At last all was ready, and they sat down to breakfast. They had scarcely begun when a new-comer entered.
“I thought I should find you at breakfast, Maynard. Give me some, like a good fellow. My fire is gone out, and I can’t find either my gyp or bed-maker, although I’ve been shouting from the window till I am as hoarse as a raven. What are you eating? Steak, and mighty nicely done too.”
Their hunger once somewhat appeased, they began to talk over the events of the past night, and of the boat supper.
“Do you know, Frank,” Teddy Drake said, after a pause, “that cousin of yours—Bingham—becomes more unpleasant every day. I thought last night there would have been a row half-a-dozen times. He is the most insufferable little beggar I ever came across.”
Frank laughed. “Bingham does make himself disagreeable, Drake, I quite allow; but it is really all manner, he is not a bad fellow.”
“I only go by what I see and hear, Frank, and I call him a cantankerous little vermin.”
“It is all outside, Drake; he is a good-hearted fellow in the main.”
“I don’t think it, Frank. I tell you he is a chip of the evil one.”
“Without going as far as Drake,” Prescott said, smiling, “I confess, Frank, that I don’t like Bingham. It is not that he is disagreeable, although he certainly is that, but that I feel instinctively repelled by him. Frankly, Maynard, he gives me the impression of being bad hearted. He is essentially a man I could not trust.”