"Nothing beats sausages," said Uncle Simon again.
Bobby concurred.
Then the conversation languished, just as it may between two old friends or boon companions who have no need to keep up talk.
"Feeling all right this morning?" ventured Bobby.
"Never felt better in my life," replied the other. "Never felt better in my life. How did you manage to get home?"
"Oh, I got home all right."
Simon scarcely seemed to hear this comforting declaration; scrambled eggs had been placed before him.
Bobby, in sudden contemplation of a month of this business, almost forgot his sausages. The true horror of Uncle Simon appeared to him now for the first time. You see, he knew all the facts of the case. An ordinary person, unknowing, would have accepted Simon as all right, but it seemed to Bobby, now, that it would have been much better if his companion had been decently and honestly mad, less uncanny. He was obviously sane, though a bit divorced from things; obviously sane, and eating scrambled eggs after sausages with the abandon of a schoolboy on a holiday after a long term at a cheap school; sane, and enjoying himself after a night like that—yet he was Simon Pettigrew.
Then he noticed that Simon's eyes were constantly travelling, despite the scrambled eggs, in a given direction. A pretty young girl was breakfasting with a family party a little way off—that was the direction.
There was a mother, a father, something that looked like an uncle, what appeared to be an aunt, and what appeared to be May dressed in a washing silk blouse and plain skirt.