“Do you like eggs?”
“I do—and plenty of them. Also bacon—a good deal of bacon. Oh, and by the way——” added Sam, leaning over the banisters.
“Yes?”
“——toast—lots and lots of toast.”
“I’ll get you all you can eat.”
“You will? Tell me,” said Sam, “it has been puzzling me greatly. How do you manage to get that dress on over your wings?”
CHAPTER TEN
SAM FINDS A PHOTOGRAPH
SAM, when he came downstairs some twenty minutes later, was definitely in what Mr. Hash Todhunter would have described as the pink. The night had been bad, but joy had certainly come in the morning. The sight of the breakfast tray on a small table by the window set the seal on his mood of well-being; and for a long, luxurious space he had eyes for nothing else. It was only after he had consumed the eggs, the bacon, the toast, the coffee and the marmalade that he yielded to what is usually the first impulse of a man who finds himself in a strange room and began to explore.
It was some half minute later that Claire Lippett, clearing the dining-room table, was startled to the extent of dropping a butter dish by a loud shout or cry that seemed to proceed from the room where she had left her guest.
Hurrying thither, she found him behaving in a strange manner. He was pointing at a photograph on the mantelpiece and gesticulating wildly.