What does that Sergeant want?
“Humph!” grunted Uncle Paul, as they descended at last, to hear the fire crackling in the kitchen, and the bright old copper kettle singing its morning song.
It was a lovely morning, with the sweet scents of the garden and moor floating in at the little parlour window, and as Uncle Paul took what his irreverent nephew called a good long sniff, he slowly and ostentatiously, moved thereto by the sight of the clean white cloth and the breakfast things, hauled up his great gold watch and examined its face.
“Twenty-five minutes, thirty-seven seconds, past six, Pickle. Rather early for breakfast. Well, I suppose we must take things as they are; but I am very, very sorry that they took away my old coat; it was a great favourite. And those things of yours, sir, are much too good to go climbing about tors and wading in streams. I wish that Count had knocked at my door like a gentleman and asked me, as he should. He should have had this suit instead. I’d a deal rather he had it than my old shooting jacket.”
“Ha, ha!”
“What are you laughing at, sir?”
“Uncle Paul eating his words.”
“What, sir?”
“You mean, uncle, that if Count de Saix had come and knocked at the door and asked you to help him, you’d have called me up and sent me to the prison for the soldiers.”
“Now look here, Rodney, that’s impudence, sir, and— Ah! There’s the microscope, and the slides and the glasses. Have they been disturbed?”