Chapter Twenty.
The Morning Paper.
No one by any stretch of the imagination could have called the admiral a good reader. In fact, a person might very well have been considered to be strictly within the limits of truth if he had declared the old officer to be the worst reader he ever heard. But so it was, from the crookedness of human nature, that he always made a point of reading every piece of news in the paper which he considered interesting, aloud, for the benefit of those with him at the breakfast table.
Matters happen strangely quite as frequently as they go on in the regular groove of routine, and hence it happened, one morning at breakfast, that is to say, on the morning after the tragedy at the convict prison, that Sir Mark put on his gold spectacles as soon as he had finished his eggs and bacon and one cup of coffee, and, taking the freshly aired paper, opened it with a good deal of rustling noise, and coughed.
Edie looked across at her cousin with a mischievous smile, but Myra was gazing thoughtfully before her, and the glance missed its mark.
“Hum! ha!” growled Sir Mark. “‘London, South, and Channel. Same as number three.’ Confound number three! Who wants to refer to that? Oh, here we are: ‘Light winds, shifting to east. Fine generally.’ Climate’s improving, girls. More coffee, Myra. Pass my cup, Edie, dear.”
He skimmed over the summary, and then turned to the police cases, found nothing particular, and went on to the sessions, stopping to refresh himself from time to time, while Edie wondered what her cousin’s thoughts might be.
“Dear me!” exclaimed the admiral suddenly; “how singular! I must read you this, girls. Here’s another forgery of foreign banknotes.”
The click of Myra’s teacup as she suddenly set it down made the admiral drop the paper and read in his child’s blank face the terrible slip he had made.