“Yes, I am here,” was the reply. “How are you?”

“Oh, I am all right. Have I been to sleep?”

“Well, yes, you have been to sleep,” said Morny, smiling at him in a rather peculiar way.

“What are you laughing at?”

“Oh, I was only smiling at you.”

“What, am I scratched and knocked about?”

“Oh, very slightly.”

“But I say, I am so precious hungry. What time is it?”

“Just upon six. Some bells or another, as you call it.”

“Get out! Why, it was seven o’clock this morning when I lay down to sleep after my bath; so how can it be six o’clock? You don’t mean to say that it is six o’clock in the evening?”