Chapter Fourteen.
Breakfast with the Law, and what Followed.
I let the book fall in a shamefaced way as my host took a great, ugly old silver watch from beneath his pillow, looked at it, shook it, looked at it again, and then exclaimed:
“It’s either ’levin o’clock or else she’s been up to her larks. Hush!”
He held up his hand, for just then a clock began to strike, and we both counted eleven.
“Then she was right for once in a way. Why didn’t you call me at ten?”
“I forgot, sir. I was reading,” I faltered; for I felt I had been guilty of a great breach of trust.
“And you haven’t had no breakfast,” he said, dressing himself quickly, and then plunging his face into the basin of water, to splash and blow loudly, before having a most vigorous rub with the towel. “Why, you must be as hungry as a hunter,” he continued, as he halted in what was apparently his morning costume of flannel shirt and trousers. “We’ll very soon have it ready, though. Shove the cloth on, youngster; the cups and saucers are in that cupboard, that’s right, look alive.”
I hastened to do what he wished, and in a few minutes had spread the table after the fashion observed by Mary at Mr Blakeford’s, while Mr Revitts took a couple of rashers of bacon out of a piece of newspaper on the top of the bookshelf, and some bread and a preserve jar containing butter out of a box under the table. Next he poured some coffee out of a canister into the pot, and having inserted his feet into slippers, he prepared to go out of the room.
“Bedroom, with use of the kitchen, for a single gentleman,” he said, winking one eye. “That’s me. Back in five minutes, youngster.”