§ 1
“M
“Miss Halliday,” announced the Efficient Baxter, removing another letter from its envelope and submitting it to a swift, keen scrutiny, “arrives at about three to-day. She is catching the twelve-fifty train.”
He placed the letter on the pile beside his plate; and, having decapitated an egg, peered sharply into its interior as if hoping to surprise guilty secrets. For it was the breakfast hour, and the members of the house party, scattered up and down the long table, were fortifying their tissues against another day. An agreeable scent of bacon floated over the scene like a benediction.
Lord Emsworth looked up from the seed catalogue in which he was immersed. For some time past his enjoyment of the meal had been marred by a vague sense of something missing, and now he knew what it was.
“Coffee!” he said, not violently, but in the voice of a good man oppressed. “I want coffee. Why have I no coffee? Constance, my dear, I should have coffee. Why have I none?”
“I’m sure I gave you some,” said Lady Constance, brightly presiding over the beverages at the other end of the table.
“Then where is it?” demanded his lordship clinchingly.
Baxter—almost regretfully, it seemed—gave the egg a clean bill of health, and turned in his able way to cope with this domestic problem.
“Your coffee is behind the catalogue you are reading, Lord Emsworth. You propped the catalogue against your cup.”