He absent-mindedly seized two pieces of bread from the basket offered to him by a waiter, and began to eat as if famished.
“Steady, man, steady,” exclaimed Turner, leaning forward with a horror-stricken face to restrain him. “Don’t spoil a grand appetite on bread. Gad! I wish I could fall on my food like that. You seem to be starving.”
“I think I forgot to have any breakfast,” said Marvin, apologetically.
“I dare say you did!” was the angry retort. “You always were a bit of an ass, you know, Sep. But I have ordered a tiptop luncheon, and I’ll trouble you not to wolf like that.”
“Well—well, I’m sorry,” said the other, who, even in the far-off days at Ipswich school, had always been in the clouds, while John Turner moved essentially on the earth.
“And do not sell that Nanteuil to the first bidder,” went on Turner, with a glance, of which the keenness was entirely disarmed by the good-natured roundness of his huge cheeks. “I know a man who will buy it—at a good price, too. Where did you get it?”
“Ah! that is a long story,” replied Marvin, looking dreamily out of the window. “I bought it, years ago, at Farlingford. But it is a long story.”
“Then tell it, slowly. While I eat this sole à la Normande. I see you’ve nearly finished yours, and I have scarcely begun.”
It was a vague and disjointed enough story, as related by Septimus Marvin. And it was the story of Loo Barebone’s father. As it progressed John Turner grew redder and redder in the face, while he drank glass after glass of Burgundy.
“A queer story,” he ejaculated, breathlessly. “Go on. And you bought this engraving from the man himself, before he died? Did he tell you where he got it? It is the portrait of a woman, you say.”